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MOSCOW. – Moscow stands for talks with Kiev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said yesterday.
“President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed that we prefer talks,” he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
“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.
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 organised 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.
Last Thursday, the Russian top diplomat said that Kiev was deviating from its own proposals voiced at the talks, which had been welcomed by Moscow, and was indulging in provocations.
On February 24, President Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarise and de-nazify the country.
Meanwhile, China has urged all parties to stay calm and avoid groundless accusations until an investigation into Friday’s missile attack on a railway station in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk is wrapped up, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a briefing yesterday.
“As for the reports of an attack on the railway station that you mentioned, the truth and the causes should certainly be established. However, we believe that humanitarian issues should not be politicized and all accusations should be based on facts,” he pointed out. “The parties should avoid groundless accusations and stay calm until the investigation presents its conclusions,” the diplomat maintained.
Zhao also noted that China was paying much attention to the humanitarian situation in Ukraine and was concerned about the damage that was being done to civilians.
When asked if China believed that Russia was involved in the incident, he said that Beijing “supports an impartial, independent and transparent investigation into the situation”.
On Friday, at least 50 people were killed and about 100 suffered wounds in a missile attack on a railway station in Kramatrosk currently controlled by Ukrainian forces. Following the missile strike, Kiev rushed to pin the blame on Moscow.
The Russian Defence Ministry, however, countered Kiev’s claims, emphasizing that Russian troops had not conducted any combat missions in Kramatorsk last Friday. In addition, the ministry stressed that projectile fragments that had been found near the Kramatorsk railway station belong to Tochka-U tactical missiles that are used only by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. – TASS
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