The second round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine on the invasion carried out by Putin’s Army began this Thursday in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, in the Belarusian region of Brest, near the Polish border.
The meeting started with a bumpy greetingwhat mixed tension with discomfort and even a smile.
The Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, came to the table with little intention of getting along with his Russian counterparts, and he sat directly without further protocol. But then she stood up to shake hands with her counterpart.
There, the task of coordinating the greeting shift was difficult, with repeated crossings and interruptions of outstretched hands. Some managed to smile despite the war context and the threats of a resurgence of the invasion.
As happened in the first round of negotiations, on February 28, the Ukrainian representatives arrived at the meeting in informal olive green clothes and the Russian delegation again in formal suits.
“We started talking with Russian representatives. The key issues on the agenda: 1. Immediate ceasefire; 2. Truce; 3. Humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians from towns/cities destroyed or constantly bombed”, wrote Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Negotiations have started three hours late compared to the time scheduled by the Russian side. The new negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, when the eighth day of the war is completed, were to begin around 12 GMT, as reported by the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinski, who referred to “the complexity of the logistics from the Ukrainian side, which meets in Poland and then comes here, to the Brest region in Belarus”.
“We are prepared for negotiations, we are open for diplomacy, but we are in no way prepared to accept the Russian ultimatums”, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said yesterday.
Medinski said on Wednesday that at the first meeting of the delegations, which was held on February 28, “some Russian proposals” related to an “immediate ceasefire” were discussed.
He added that on some of them, “in general, there was an understanding at the negotiating table”, but on others, “as expected, the Ukrainian side took time for reflections and consultations in Kiev”.
Russia uses as an excuse for its attack – which has already cost the lives of more than two thousand civilians – a claim for “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine, as well as the recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014, and of the independence of the people’s republics of the Ukrainian east, in addition to a neutral status of Ukraine with respect to NATO.
(With information from AFP and EFE)
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