Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said on Sunday that Russia is willing to resume peace talks with Ukraine, assuring that they had been suspended because of kyiv.
“For our part, we are ready to continue the dialogue,” said Vladimir Medinski, Kremlin adviser in charge of negotiations with Ukraine, in an interview with Belarusian television.
“The freezing of the talks was completely an initiative of Ukraine,” he added, considering that “the ball was in the court” of kyiv. “Russia has never rejected negotiations,” she maintained.
The Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers met in Turkey in March and the delegations met in Istanbul, but without success.
The Ukrainian negotiator, Mijailo Podoliak, declared on Tuesday that the talks had been “suspended”, while Russia refocused its “special operation” in eastern Ukraine.
Russia continued its offensive in eastern Ukraine
Russia continued its offensive in eastern Ukraine this Saturday, May 21, and assured that it bombed a shipment of Western weapons in the northwest of that country, in a war that, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, still reserves “bloody” episodes and can only be resolved through diplomatic channels.
Ukraine will in any case have the means to resist, following US President Joe Biden approved $40 billion in aid for the former Soviet republic, invaded by Russian troops on February 24. “We look forward to this new and important help. Needed now more than ever,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter.
The aid from the United States adds to that of the European Union and the G7, the group of most industrialized countries, which on Friday pledged 19.8 billion dollars to keep the country’s finances on track. Military aid, however, faces the challenge of being routed to the front lines.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that it destroyed with sea-to-land missiles “a large shipment of weapons and military equipment supplied by the United States and European countries near the Malin railway station,” 100 km northwest of kyiv.
In an interview with a Ukrainian television channel, Zelensky assured that the war “It will be bloody, there will be fighting, but it will definitely end through diplomacy.”
“The discussions between Ukraine and Russia will definitely take place. I don’t know under what format: with intermediaries, without them, in an expanded circle or at the presidential level”, he added.
To date, several meetings have been held between negotiators from both sides, without concrete results.
In the eastern region of Donbas, a mining area partially controlled since 2014 by Kremlin-backed separatists, many cities have been living for weeks to the rhythm of Russian bombing.
In Donetsk, which together with Luhansk makes up Donbas, The shelling hit a church where civilian refugees, including children and members of the clergy, were staying, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. At least 60 people were rescued and the number of dead is currently unknown.
On Friday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said his troops were “close to completing” the liberation of Lugansk. That same day, Shoigu communicated to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the “total liberation” of Mariúpol (southeast), following the surrender of the last Ukrainian defenders entrenched for weeks in the Azovstal steelworks.
Since Monday, a total of 2,439 combatants, who were resisting in precarious conditions in the labyrinth of tunnels of that plant, have surrendered, according to the Ministry spokesman.
The conquest of Mariupol, a sea of Azov port city devastated by months of bombing, is crucial to creating a land corridor between Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
*With information from AFP.
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