Russia and Ukraine continue to want to negotiate in Turkey despite the global commotion caused by the discovery of dozens of bodies in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, a Turkish official said on Friday.

“Russia and Ukraine want to meet again in Turkey, but they are far from achieving a common text,” said this official source, who preferred not to be quoted.

According to these sources, who did not give any date for a possible new meeting, the status of Crimea and Donbas (eastern Ukraine) remains a complicated issue.

Russia claimed on Thursday that Ukraine had modified some of its proposals made in Istanbul at the end of March.

Turkey has hosted two meetings of the delegations of both countries, but the “positive atmosphere that emanated from them has been overshadowed” by the massacres that occurred in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu admitted on Thursday.

Turkey proposes evacuating civilians trapped in Mariupol by sea

The Turkish government today insisted on the urgency of declaring a ceasefire as soon as possible in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, besieged for weeks by Russian troops, to evacuate civilians, an operation that could also be carried out by the sea with ships that Turkey has offered.

Hulusi Akar, Turkey’s Defense Minister, spoke today by phone with his Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, about the “urgency of a safe evacuation by land and sea,” the Turkish Ministry said in a statement.

Turkey already offered days ago to send ships to collaborate in the departure of the civilian population from Mariupol, heavily hit by Russian bombing.