NAt the meeting in Istanbul, the Ukrainian delegation handed over to the Russian a list of conditions that Kiev considered necessary for concluding a settlement agreement. Vladimir Putin said that Russia does not give up diplomacy
Russia is determined to reach agreements with Ukraine, Moscow does not refuse a diplomatic settlement of the situation, at the meeting of delegations in Istanbul they “achieved a breakthrough”. This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteris, broadcast by the TV channel “Russia 24”.
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“We managed to achieve a fairly serious breakthrough. Our Ukrainian colleagues did not associate the security requirements with such a concept as the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine,” Putin said.
The President added that Kiev’s representatives “put the issues of Crimea, Sevastopol and the newly recognized republics of Donbass” out of brackets, but after reaching these agreements, Moscow faced provocations, citing the events in Bucha as an example. “We know who did it, who prepared this provocation,” Putin stressed.
In early April, the Ukrainian authorities and Western media distributed photos and videos from Bucha, which show the bodies of people in civilian clothes. The mayor of the city, Anatoly Fedoruk, told AFP that 280 more people were buried in mass graves.
The Defense Ministry called these materials a provocation and stated that during the time the city was under the control of the Russian military, local residents were not injured. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the information about the killings staged by Kiev and Western countries that are trying to “disperse” this data on the Internet. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia has assured that it will conduct a check on the fact of publishing materials on the Internet about the situation in Bucha.
The Russian President also called the actions of the Russian forces a “forced measure”, adding that the residents of Donbass were under blockade for eight years, which was publicly recognized by the Ukrainian authorities. This was not noticed by “colleagues in the West,” Putin claims.
Negotiations on a settlement in Ukraine began on February 27, the parties held several rounds in person and several in video mode. The delegations made the greatest progress during a meeting with the participation of the Foreign Ministers of Russia, Ukraine and Turkey in Istanbul on February 29. Then the negotiations were planned to continue for two days, but due to the fact that the parties agreed on a significant number of issues on the first day, it was decided not to continue the round.
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Following the meeting, the head of the Russian delegation and presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky said that Russia had taken “two huge steps towards peace” and decided on them after Kiev’s written proposals, which became its “first formulated desire for compromise”. The proposals, Medinsky said, concerned, among other things, the neutral status of Ukraine.
After the Istanbul meeting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who made considerable efforts to organize the dialogue, said that the negotiations “gave a significant impetus to the peace process”.
What issues did the parties discuss in Istanbul
According to Moscow’s assessment, “significant progress” was made in Istanbul on the issue of Ukraine’s non-aligned and non-nuclear status, as well as security guarantees for it. The Ukrainian side also expressed its understanding of the situation with Crimea and Donbass.
Kiev offered Moscow to resolve the issue of Crimea’s ownership in bilateral negotiations for 15 years, and to coordinate the issue of Donbass at a meeting of heads of state. The affiliation of these regions will not be challenged by Kiev militarily, it was noted in the voiced proposals of Ukraine. Kiev also declared its readiness to ensure that security guarantees do not apply to Crimea and Donbass.
Ukraine proposed to make the Treaty on Security guarantees multilateral and creating the basis for a new security system in Europe. The guarantors of such a system, Kyiv proposed to make the country— the permanent members of the UN security Council, including Russia, Turkey, Germany, Italy, Israel, Poland and Canada. Ukraine also wants Russia not to object to the country’s accession to the EU.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said later that despite the progress made, Moscow and Kiev have not yet worked out final agreements.
On April 1, the parties resumed negotiations via video link with the involvement of working subgroups, but later, after the publication in the media of footage of what happened in the city of Bucha, Kiev region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Ukrainian delegation tried to interrupt the dialogue. Calling the publication a provocation, Lavrov said that it was undertaken in order to “disrupt the ongoing negotiations”.
On April 8, Kiev confirmed that they were continuing negotiations with Russia in a permanent online format and that diplomatic, legal, military and other working groups were participating in the meetings. However, according to the adviser to the head of the office of the Ukrainian president Mikhail Podolyak, “there is some change in the negotiating background,” including in connection with the events in Bucha. “This is not a matter of actual negotiations, but the emotional background on which these negotiations are conducted,” Podolyak said at the time.
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