US and Russia set date for plenary commission meeting on Cold War-era POWs

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – “We have agreed the dateline of the 21st Moscow plenary session. The US side has confirmed it will attend the meeting,” Russia’s lead delegate Andrei Taranov told Sputnik on Friday after holding technical talks with the US delegation in Washington.

Taranov, the deputy chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s department tasked with keeping alive the memory of fallen soldiers, said negotiators had set out “new ways for cooperation on the issues related to the Cold War and the Vietnam War.”

The Russian Embassy in Washington said in a statement the delegations had also discussed outlooks for cooperation in the search for Russian and US pilots whose planes crashed in Korea during the 1950-1953 war.

Russia has granted the US Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency access to declassified documents on Soviet Air Force’s operations in Korea during that period, providing it with extra information about over 300 US military personnel, the Embassy added.