White House refuses to describe channels of dialogue with Russia in order to 'protect them'

The US administration has maintained channels of communication with Russia at senior levels, US White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Monday. However, he refused to describe those in order to protect them.

"We in the Biden administration have the opportunity to engage at senior levels with the Russians to communicate, to reduce risk to convey the consequences of the potential use of nuclear weapons. We have not described the channels that we have done in order to protect those channels and I'm afraid I can't go further than that today," he said at an online event hosted by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

This is how Sullivan commented on a Wall Street Journal report about his conversations with Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev.