The next round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine did not bring significant results. There is only hope that on Tuesday it will still be possible to launch the work of humanitarian corridors, which the parties agreed on last week, but could not implement. So far, there has been no progress in the discussion on political issues. The Russian delegation left the talks frankly disappointed.
On Monday, the third round of negotiations between the delegations of Russia and Ukraine took place. Traditionally, the Ukrainian delegation arrived at the meeting two hours later than the original agreement. The negotiations, like the previous round on March 3, were held on the territory of Belarus in Belovezhskaya Pushcha and lasted about three hours.
“The third round of negotiations has ended. There are small positive shifts in improving the logistics of humanitarian corridors… Intensive consultations on the basic political block of the settlement, along with a ceasefire and security guarantees, have continued,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, after the meeting with the Russian delegation.
The head of the Russian negotiators, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, in turn, did not hide his disappointment. According to him, during the meeting, the Ukrainian side gave assurances that the humanitarian corridors would start working from Tuesday.
According to Mr. Medinsky, so far the Ukrainian armed forces on the ground have not followed the orders of the command and administration.
“In addition, the discussion on political and military aspects continued. However, it is not easy and it is too early to talk about something positive,” he said. The presidential aide said that the Russian delegation had brought “concrete agreements, projects and proposals” with them to Belarus and hoped that it would be possible to sign a protocol on some of the points that seemed to have been agreed upon earlier. “However, the Ukrainian side took all these documents home for study. I couldn’t sign on the spot. To be honest, our expectations from the negotiations did not come true, but we hope that next time we will be able to take a more significant step forward. Negotiations will be continued,” Vladimir Medinsky added.
An agreement on the creation of humanitarian corridors for the exit of the civilian population from the areas of hostilities and the delivery of food and medicines there was reached on March 3, but it did not really come to fruition in four days. The parties blamed each other for the failure of the agreements. On Monday, the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine of the RF Armed Forces announced a “silence regime” from 10:00 a.m. for the exit of residents from Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkov and Sumy.
However, as Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the National Defense Control Center of the Russian Federation, said on Monday, the Ukrainian side “under the threat of physical violence” did not let civilians and foreigners out of the settlements where humanitarian corridors were to be created.
“In Mariupol, any attempts by the civilian population and foreign citizens to advance in the direction of the gathering places for humanitarian convoys were severely suppressed, up to the use of weapons to kill,” he gave an example. Mr. Mizintsev also called absurd the requests of the Ukrainian side to ensure the evacuation from the settlements of Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpen, Dymer and Ivankovo in the Kiev region, as well as Liptsi and Strilech in the Kharkov region, which are under the control of the Russian armed forces. According to him, none of the residents of these settlements expressed a desire to evacuate, people live peacefully in their homes, nothing threatens them.
Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk accused the Russian Federation of having twice disrupted the opening of humanitarian corridors by “shelling the routes.” At the same time, she was indignant at the intention of the Russian side to evacuate residents from a number of settlements (Kyiv, Mariupol, Kharkov and Sumy) to Russia and Belarus.
“That is, they want our citizens to go to the territory of the Russian Federation. Absurd, cynical, unacceptable,” Vereshchuk stressed.
She also urged Moscow to “stop manipulating civilian lives.”
The first attempt to open humanitarian corridors, in particular from Mariupol and Volnovakha, was made on 5 March. It turned out to be unsuccessful – the parties also accused each other of disrupting the agreements. The Ukrainian side reported that it was planned to take out more than 200 thousand people from Mariupol, and more than 15 thousand from Volnovakha. A similar attempt to take people out of Mariupol on March 6 also ended in failure. Now members of the Ukrainian delegation are personally going to oversee the evacuation of the population, going to Mariupol immediately after the meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Mikhail Podolyak told about this in an interview with Russian journalist Yulia Latynina on her YouTube channel.
As for the agreement on the cessation of hostilities, here the parties are still far from compromise.
On the eve of the third round of talks, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in an interview with Reuters, once again recalled Russia’s demands on Ukraine: “They must amend their constitution, according to which Ukraine will reject any goal of joining any bloc. We also talked about the fact that they should recognize that Crimea is Russian territory and that they should recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. And it’s all”. He made it clear that if these conditions are met, as well as the end of hostilities on the part of Ukraine, Russia will stop the military operation. “They must complete their military operations, and then no one will shoot,” he said.
At the same time, Kyiv is not going to make territorial concessions to Moscow. In an interview with the American television channel Fox News, a member of the Ukrainian delegation at the talks, head of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamia, said that the only issues on which agreement is almost impossible are Crimea, as well as recognition of the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics.
“This is unacceptable in Ukrainian society. And it’s not about politicians, but about Ukrainians, who will never allow this. This is the main problem, and, frankly, we still do not know how to overcome these barriers,” David Arakhamia said.
The terms of the ceasefire this week will be considered at another site. On March 10, a meeting between Russian and Ukrainian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Dmitry Kuleba is planned through the mediation of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. It should take place on the sidelines of the Anatolian Diplomatic Forum. Turkey has been offering its mediation in the settlement of Russian-Ukrainian differences for a very long time, but so far Moscow has refused Ankara’s diplomatic services. Now the situation has changed. “We do not close the door to diplomatic options. And as soon as there are relevant signals about this, we will implement them,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, commenting on the upcoming meeting between Sergey Lavrov and Dmitry Kuleba.