5:16 am: Ukraine’s neutrality on the negotiating table
Russian negotiators arrived in Istanbul on Monday for a new round of talks with the Ukrainians which is expected to start on Tuesday. A previous face-to-face negotiation session had already taken place on March 10 in Turkey, at the level of foreign ministers, but had not led to any progress.
One of the important points of the negotiations concerns “security guarantees and neutrality, the nuclear-free status of our state”, President Zelensky said on Sunday. This point “is being studied in depth”, but it will have to be accompanied by a referendum and security guarantees, he warned, accusing Putin and his entourage of “dragging things out”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, tempered expectations on Monday, saying negotiations so far had not produced “significant progress”.