Putin, Ukrainian president plan talks
MOSCOW — The presidents of Russia and Ukraine will meet next week in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, to discuss the conflict consuming eastern Ukraine and Kiev’s diplomatic turn toward the European Union that sparked the fighting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office announced the Tuesday summit that will include the three former Soviet states of the Kremlinled Eurasian Customs Union — Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan — as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and three top EU officials.
Kiev also said that Po- roshenko would host German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday for talks before the potentially volatile Minsk meeting.
The talks between Putin and Poroshenko will be the first since the Ukrainian oligarch’s June 7 inauguration, though they did speak briefly the day before on the sidelines of the 70th anniversary of the Allied D-day landing in Normandy.
Poroshenko’s office said the meeting was arranged to discuss energy security, Ukraine’s entering a special trade relationship with the 28-state EU and the raging conf lict with pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich provoked a rebellion among Europe-leaning Ukrainians in November when, under pressure from Putin, he rejected the EU association agreement that had been under negotiation for three years.
Yanukovich was overthrown during the February culmination of the revolt, and the appointment of an interim leadership of his political opponents spurred Putin to deploy troops to seize Ukraine’s Crimea region. On March 18, Putin annexed the peninsula where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has long been based, inspiring Russian nationalists in eastern Ukraine to rebel against rule from Kiev.
Putin has been accused by the Ukrainian leadership and its Western allies of fomenting the insurgency and sending in arms and fighters, charges that the Kremlin denies.
On Tuesday, a Ukrainian security spokesman said government forces had retaken more territory in Luhansk, the besieged eastern city that is one of two remaining strongholds of the separatists.
Col. Andriy Lysenko of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council told journalists in Kiev, the capital, that one part of central Luhansk had been “liberated,” although fighting continued in other areas of the city where more than 200,000 civilians remain.
Lysenko also said troops had recovered the bodies of 17 civilians killed Monday when rocket fire hit an evacuation convoy headed for Russia, an attack for which Kiev authorities have blamed the separatists.
Living conditions in Luhansk, a city of 465,000 before the conf lict, are reported to be dire. Many of its shabby concrete apartment blocks have been hit by artillery fire over the last five months, knocking out water and power.
A Russian convoy that left Moscow eight days ago carrying aid to trapped civilians in Luhansk remained parked near the Russia-Ukraine border awaiting security assurances from the Kiev government and the insurgents before escorts with the International Committee of the Red Cross would proceed with delivery, Russian news reports said.
Putin last week announced that he was sending the 280-truck convoy, stirring fear in Kiev that the deployment was cover for an invasion of eastern Ukraine or for resupplying the insurgents with weapons.
Poroshenko’s government insisted that the cargo be inspected before it crossed into Ukraine and that the convoy enter through a government-controlled border crossing. The trucks instead headed to Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, a town in Russia’s Rostov region about 20 miles from a separatist-held crossing.
The convoy is said to be carrying 2,000 tons of supplies, including bottled water, grain, baby food, sleeping bags and generators.