Moscow: Russia’s top negotiator in talks with Ukraine said it was too early to talk about a meeting between the two countries’ presidents.
Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation in Tuesday’s talks in Istanbul, Turkey, said “there is still a lot of work to do” to finalise a draft agreement before Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could meet.
Speaking on Sunday in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency, Medinsky reaffirmed that the parties reached a tentative agreement on the need for Ukraine to adopt a neutral status and refrain from holding foreign military bases in exchange for international security guarantees.
Asked about Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia’s claim that Moscow’s negotiators had informally agreed to most proposals by Ukraine during the talks in Istanbul this week and the two presidents could discuss the draft deal, Medinsky said he did not share Arakhamia’s optimism.
He said the talks will continue online on Monday.
Medinsky emphasised that Russia’s stand on Crimea and rebel regions in Ukraine’s east remained unchanged.
The Kremlin demands that Ukraine acknowledge Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and recognise the independence of Russia-backed separatist regions in Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
— Russian missiles strike fuel depots in Odesa; civilians await another possible evacuation
— Ukraine blogger video fuels false info on Mariupol bombing
— Ukrainian forces retake areas near Kyiv
— Russian space chief says sanctions could imperil International Space Station
— Ukraine volunteer fighters from near and far: a photo gallery
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
Berlin — The mayor of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has expressed shock at what he called “cruel war crimes” committed by Russian soldiers in the town of Bucha northwest of the capital.
Referring to reports of executed civilians, Klitschko told German daily Bild on Sunday that “what happened in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv can only be described as genocide”.
An AP crew on Sunday saw the bodies of at least nine people who appeared to have been executed.
At least two of them had their hands tied behind their backs. They were all in civilian clothes and at least three were naked from the waist up. One appeared shot in the chest from close range.
Klitschko said Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for these “cruel war crimes”, adding that civilians had been “shot with tied hands”.
He called on the the whole world and especially Germany to immediately end gas imports from Russia.
He said that “especially for Germany, there can only be one consequence: Not a penny should go to Russia anymore, that’s bloody money used to slaughter people. The gas and oil embargo must come immediately.”
AP