Russia stands for talks with Ukraine: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov
New Delhi: Moscow stands for talks with Kyiv. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed that we pre, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.
“I see no reasons for not continuing them [the talks], although the Ukrainian side tends to be evasive, sometimes doing U-turns and rejecting what it proposed a couple of days before. But we are persistent and patient,” he said in an interview.
The Russian-Ukrainian talks began on February 28, four days after the launch of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. Several meetings were held in Belarus to be continued in the online format. On March 10, Turkey organized a meeting between Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Dmitry Kuleba of Ukraine on the sidelines of a diplomatic forum in Antalya. Another offline round of talks was held in Istanbul on March 29.
On April 7, the Russian top diplomat said that “Kyiv was deviating from its own proposals voiced at the talks, which had been welcomed by Moscow, and was indulging in provocations.”
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbas republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country.
(Vinayak)
