Russian media reports say the Russian and Ukrainian delegations wrapped up the first day of talks in Istanbul on Tuesday.
The talks were supposed to last two days – March 29 and 30 – but sources in the Russian delegation and the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the round was over and the meeting on Wednesday was off, according to TASS.
According to head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky, the Russian-Ukrainian talks that took place in Istanbul on Tuesday were constructive
He said Moscow made two de-escalatory steps. One was offering to hold a meeting between presidents Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky simultaneously with the initialing of a peace treaty by their Foreign Ministries, or earlier than planned before. In the other step, Russian troops would drastically reduce their activities toward Kiev and Chernigov.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said the move was meant “to increase trust” in talks aimed at ending the fighting, as negotiators met face-to-face on Tuesday after several rounds of failed talks.
According to Al Jazeera, on the Ukrainian side, negotiators said they were willing to agree to a neutral status – one of Russia’s key demands – if an international agreement under which other countries would serve as guarantors of Ukraine’s security would come into place.
“We want an international mechanism of security guarantees where guarantor countries will act in a similar way to NATO’s article number five – and even more firmly,” David Arakhamia, a Ukrainian negotiator, told reporters.
Arakhamia reportedly said a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian presidents is possible, and that before any final agreement with Russia, there needs to be full peace across Ukraine.
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the talks at the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus strait marked “most significant progress” since war broke out between the two countries.
Speaking after the three-hour talks concluded, Cavusoglu said the discussions represented “the most significant progress since negotiations began.”
According to Al Jazeera, Russia’s announcement could be the “most significant by the Russian military” since President Vladimir Putin launched the so-called special military operation in Ukraine last month.
This is reportedly an indication that there has been major progress in the talks” between Moscow and Kiev.
The move would send a message to the Ukrainians that Russia has no intentions whatsoever to mass troops or move troops in the future to try and take over Kiev.
Al-Jazeera says Ukrainian television said the meeting began with “a cold welcome” and no handshake between the delegations.
Neither side has reportedly budged over Russia’s territorial demands, including Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014, and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which Moscow has demanded Kiev cede to pro-Russian separatists.
Previous rounds of Russia-Ukraine talks, held in person in Belarus or by video, failed to make progress on ending a more-than-month-long war that has killed thousands and driven more than 10 million Ukrainians from their homes – including almost four million from their country.
