Moskow says “substantial progress was reached.”
QUICK FACTS:
- Russian and Ukrainian officials gave their most upbeat assessments yet on Sunday of progress in their talks on the military conflict in Ukraine, suggesting there could be positive results within days, Reuters reports.
- Head of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee and member of the Russian delegation Leonid Slutsky said that “substantial progress was reached” regarding Russia-Ukraine negotiations, according to Ukrainian news outlet Interfax.
- “If we compare the positions of both delegations at the beginning of the negotiations and today, we will see that substantial progress was reached. According to my personal expectations, this progress may evolve into a common position of both delegations, and into documents to be signed in the next few days,” Slutsky said in an interview with the RT Arabic television channel.
- Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, who is also a Ukrainian negotiator, said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper published late on March 12, that there are “a dozen proposals” on the negotiating table, including those concerning a ceasefire and the withdrawal of troops, Interfax notes.
- “Right now all of this is [under consideration] in the conditional working groups, and this is being discussed in legal formats how the final documents might look like. After all, we will have to initial them later, sign them and so on. As soon as mutual, already legal formats are elaborated, a meeting will be scheduled, the fourth round of negotiations. It could be tomorrow, the day after tomorrow,” Podolyak said.
UKRAINE WILL “NOT CONCEDE”:
- Ukraine has said it is willing to negotiate, but not to surrender or accept any ultimatums, according to Reuters.
- “We will not concede in principle on any positions. Russia now understands this. Russia is already beginning to talk constructively,” Ukrainian negotiator and presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in a video posted online.
- “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days,” he said.
BACKGROUND:
- There have been three rounds of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations so far, occurring on Feb 28, March 3, and March 7. “The latest round of talks, as Moscow and Kyiv agreed, failed to produce the desirable results. Both sides expressed the wish to go ahead with negotiations and noted favorable shifts on the issue of humanitarian corridors,” TASS reports.
- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has also said that Russia was showing signs of willingness to engage in substantive negotiations about ending a conflict in which thousands have died, according to Reuters.
- The Kremlin’s chief spokesman said on Monday that Russia was ready to halt military operations “in a moment” if Kyiv met a list of conditions, those demands involving Ukraine’s acknowledgment of Crimea as Russian territory as well as the invaded nation’s recognition of the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told ABC last week that Ukraine “can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on,” adding “we’re not ready for capitulation.”
- More than 2.5 million people have fled the conflicted Ukrainian region, Reuters notes.
