Talks with Ukraine were meaningful: Russia
Russia says it will ‘radically’ reduce military activity in northern Ukraine and around the capital to ‘increase mutual trust’ at negotiations
LVIV/ISTANBUL: Ukraine proposed adopting neutral status in exchange for security guarantees at talks with Russia in Turkey, meaning it would not join military alliances or host military bases, Ukrainian negotiators said on Tuesday.
The proposals would also include a 15-year consultation period on the status of annexed Crimea and could come into force only in the event of a complete ceasefire, the negotiators told reporters in Istanbul.
The proposals are the most detailed and concrete that Ukraine has aired publicly. They also envisage security guarantees along the lines of the Nato military alliance’s Article 5, its collective defence clause. Poland, Israel, Turkey and Canada could among the potential security guarantors.
“If we manage to consolidate these key provisions, and for us this is the most fundamental, then Ukraine will be in a position to actually fix its current status as a non-bloc and non-nuclear state in the form of permanent neutrality,” said negotiator Oleksander Chaly.
“We will not host foreign military bases on our territory, as well as deploy military contingents on our territory, and we will not enter into military-political alliances,” he said, in comments broadcast on Ukrainian national television.
“Military exercises on our territory will take place with the consent of the guarantor countries.”
There was enough material in the current Ukrainian proposals to warrant a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Ukrainian negotiators said, adding they were awaiting Russia’s response.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in Turkey on Tuesday for the first face-to-face talks in nearly three weeks, with Ukraine seeking a ceasefire without compromising on territory or sovereignty as its forces have pushed
Russians back from Kyiv.
Meanwhile, the Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said the talks with Ukraine were “meaningful”, while Russia’s deputy defence minister said that Moscow has decided to “fundamentally... cut back” operations near the capital and another major city to “increase mutual trust” at talks aimed at ending the fighting.
Russia’s deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin said Russian forces would cut back “military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv.”
The Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Tuesday’s talks were the most significant progress in the negotiations between the two countries.
Ahead of the talks, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the two sides that they had a “historic responsibility” to stop the fighting. “We believe that there will be no losers in a just peace. Prolonging the conflict is not in anyone’s interest,” Erdogan said, as he greeted the two delegations seated on opposite sides of a long table.
All this came as fighting went continued on the ground. Earlier, a Russian rocket hit an administration building in the southern Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv, killing three people and wounding 22, emergency services said.
Russia said it destroyed a fuel depot in western Ukraine’s Rivne region.
Defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia had degraded Ukraine’s military and would respond if Nato supplied Ukraine with planes and air defence systems.
On Tuesday morning, British military intelligence said Ukrainian forces were continuing counter attacks to the northwest of Kyiv, and Russia has kept up heavy shelling of Mariupol.
Abramovich appears at negotiations in Istanbul
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held the first direct peace talks in more than two weeks on Tuesday in Istanbul, with the surprise attendance of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich who is sanctioned by the West over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The two teams sat facing each other at a long table in the presidential office, with the Russian oligarch sitting in the front row of observers wearing a blue suit, a Turkish presidential video feed showed. Signs have emerged since the war began that Abramovich has been seeking to encourage negotiations, and he has travelled to Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and Israel in March. Two of his superyachts are docked at Turkish resorts.
His presence baffled at least one Ukrainian diplomat, while Moscow said he was not formally negotiating but rather there as a go-between.
Commenting on Abramovich’s presence, Ukrainian ambassador to Britain Vadym Prystaiko told the BBC: “I have no idea what Mr Abramovich is claiming or doing. He is not a part of the negotiation team.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov Peskov told reporters on a conference call Abramovich was not an official member of the Russian delegation at the talks, but acknowledged his presence there to “enable certain contacts” between sides.