The Kremlin said on Sunday that talks between Kyiv and Moscow would continue on Monday via videoconference, in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine, at a time when diplomatic contacts are increasing despite the fighting.
• Read also: direct | The eighteenth day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
• Read also: War in Ukraine: Moscow says it killed ‘foreign mercenaries’ in strikes
• Read also: Russian negotiator sees ‘progress’ in talks
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, citing the state news agency TASS, denied holding talks on Sunday, saying they would resume on March 14.
Earlier today, a Russian negotiator estimated that talks were progressing.
“If we compare the position of the two delegations between the start of negotiations and now, we see significant progress,” said Leonid Slutsky, a parliamentarian who was part of the Russian delegation that recently met with Ukrainian negotiators in Belarus.
“I personally expect this progress to lead in the near future to a common position between the two delegations and the signing of documents,” he was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying.
Since the start of the Moscow military offensive on February 24, three rounds of talks have been held in Belarus. They were mainly focused on creating humanitarian corridors for civilians.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian Dmytro Kuleba left discussions in Turkey without declaring tangible progress, but pledged to continue dialogue.
On Sunday, Mikhailo Podolak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tweeted that Moscow had stopped issuing “ultimatums” to Kyiv and had begun to “listen carefully to our proposals.”
Mr. Zelensky estimated on Saturday that Moscow had taken a “fundamentally different” approach to these negotiations, and his counterpart Vladimir Putin told him on Friday that he had seen “positive progress.”
