(MaceNews) – Foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine, Sergei Lavrov and Dmitry Kuleba, completed their meeting in the Turkish Mediterranean resort town of Antalya, the highest-level meeting between the two post-Soviet states on the15th day of shocking bloodshed in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24th. There was no progress to report but the Ukraine foreign minister said he is ready to meet again.
The meeting, which both sides deemed important, took place on the margins of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum and was hosted by the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. It is also was seen as the key to further negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which have already seen three largely fruitless rounds, focusing on both political, military and humanitarian issues.
Following the about hour-long meeting, Kuleba said Lavov was not in a position to commit himself on a humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol.
“We did not make progress in talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in establishing a temporary ceasefire,” he said.
For his part, Lavrov said Russia will overcome the financial crisis still gathering strength and said his country is not interested in “justifying our actions in Ukraine.” He accused the U.S. of using Ukraine territory to develop biological weapons. He said Russia does not plan to attack other countries.
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Turkey, a NATO country, has condemned the Russian invasion, but attempts to position itself as a mediator, opposing the sanctions against Moscow and stressing good relations with both Ukraine and Russia. The meeting was scheduled after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
In the run-up to the meeting, both Russia and Ukraine have sent minor signals that they might test the waters for some sort of a compromise. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov dropped the word “denazification” referring to Ukraine’s ultranationalists, whom Russian propaganda blames for all the misdeeds in Ukraine, from the latest official pronouncements of Russian demands.
They continue to include “demilitarization” of Ukraine, its recognition of Crimea as Russian and the regions of Donetsk an Luhansk in eastern Ukraine known collectively as Donbass as “independent republics.” The key element of Russian demands is the neutral status of Ukraine, which has previously aspired to join NATO – an issue Putin had raised as his top concern endangering Russian security as he announced the “special military operation” on Feb. 24th.
Turkey President Erdogan speaks with U.S. President Biden at 10 A.M Washington time.
Also on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia was setting “neither the goal of occupying Ukraine, nor the destruction of Ukrainian statehood, nor overthrowing of the acting government” – quite a departure from Putin’s earlier call on Ukraine’s military to organize a coup and saying that Ukraine’s statehood could be “put into question.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the other hand, hinted that he is still ready to talk about neutrality – but not about recognition of the breakaway areas. “In any talks my goal is to end the war with Russia,” Zelensky was quoted by the German magazine Das Bild as saying. “And I am also ready for certain steps. One can agree to compromises, but they cannot be the betrayal of my country,” he added.
Earlier on Wednesday, Zenelsky’s aide Ihor Zhovkva was quoted by German ARD television as saying that his country is ready to discuss “what Ukraine’s possible neutral status might look like”. However, ceding Ukraine’s territory to Russia or the “republics” has been repeatedly ruled out by Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials.
The meeting of foreign ministers in Turkey is likely to be “the beginning rather than the end of the negotiation process, head of of the Russian Council on Foreign Affairs Andrei Kortunov said, as quoted by TASS. He refused to predict, whether it will lead to a possible meeting between Putin and Zelensky – something the Ukrainian president has long wanted. On the other hand, Kortunov said, the foreign ministers can discuss the political issues that the negotiators in previous Russia-Ukraine talks in Belarus could not handle.
Three rounds of such talks took place in various locations in Belarus. The latest round adjourned on Monday citing “some progress” in the humanitarian package. At the same time, the head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky said the Ukrainian delegation “took home” the Russian proposals on political and military issues. Only one of the reportedly agreed upon 10 humanitarian corridors functioned the following day, with parties blaming each other for attacking the civilian convoys. But minor progress in evacuations appeared to be tangible in the following days.
No date has been set for the fourth round of talks in Belarus. However, Leonid Slutsky, a member of the Russian delegation, said they would take place “very soon,” while a Belarusian politician Yuri Voskresensky said they would take place immediately after the ministerial meeting in Antalya, TASS reported.
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