Russia and Ukraine agree on second round of negotiations

The parties established a series of priorities and issues that require some decisions,” said Mikhailo Podoliak, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, while his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Medinski, indicated that the new meeting will take place “soon” on the border between Poland and Belarus.

The negotiations deal with the invasion of Ukraine carried out since Thursday by the Russian army, which has met with strong resistance from the Ukrainian forces.

On Monday, while the delegations of both countries were meeting, there were heavy clashes in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkov (east), where local authorities reported at least 11 civilians killed in Russian bombing.

This Monday, during a conversation with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin set out a series of conditions to end the war.

These demands include the recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014; the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of the Ukrainian state and that Ukraine’s status be neutral, according to the Kremlin.

Putin has branded the pro-Western Ukrainian government “neo-Nazi”, which some observers say would mean the Russian president does not plan to seriously negotiate with him.

For his part, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, urged the Russian army to lay down its arms.

This Monday the talks were held in one of the residences of the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, on the border between Ukraine and Belarus, in the Gomel region.

 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peksov said in his daily telephone briefing that he did not want to comment on the prospects for a deal at the meeting, urging everyone to let negotiators work quietly from outside.

“Actually, I suggest that we wait for the talks. I prefer not to announce any demands (of ours). The negotiations should be carried out in silence,” he said.

“The only thing we regret is that the negotiations did not start a day earlier when we had this opportunity. As you know, our delegation has been waiting there, in Belarus, for many hours. Our delegation was ready from midnight, but the opposite party came a short time ago,” he added.

For logistical and security reasons, the Ukrainian delegation finally arrived shortly before 12:00 local time in a Polish helicopter, according to BELTA. 

The Ukrainian officials finally agreed to travel to Belarus, although not to Minsk as Russia had initially proposed, since they consider that Lukashenko is not neutral, having welcomed more than 30,000 Russian soldiers and military equipment for joint exercises that have served Moscow to cross the southern border of that country to attack Ukraine. 

In addition, Lukashenko recently declared himself willing to travel with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. 

It was in Minsk where the Peace Agreements for Donbas was signed in 2015, pacts that due to the war have remained a dead letter and that, in Moscow’s opinion, have not been implemented by Kiev in eight years. 

Ukraine agreed to start negotiations without expectations, although, according to the government, it managed to hold them “without conditions”, after the Kremlin demanded that it lay down its arms first, always according to the Kiev version.