Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke over the phone twice on April 9, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

When commenting on the second phone call, which was held at Washington's initiative, the Foreign Ministry noted "the secretary of state said that as a follow-up to the previous conversation, the American side was taking steps to take advantage of its influence on the authorities in Kyiv in order to persuade them to lay the groundwork for a nationwide inter-Ukrainian dialogue with the aim of normalizing the situation in the southeast of Ukraine and ensuring the truly representative nature of their constitutional reform."

Lavrov and Kerry "agreed that progress in these issues would facilitate the convocation of a meeting in the Russia-U.S.-European Union format along with representatives of Ukraine in order to contribute to the settlement of the inter-Ukrainian crisis," it said.