Third round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine ends without progress | News

The third round of negotiations agreed between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations concluded on Monday without results in the Belovezha forest area, on the border between Belarus and Poland.

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The head of the Russian negotiating team and adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Medinsky, told the media that "the expectations of the Russian side of the negotiations with Ukraine were not met."

Medinsky said that they hoped that this Monday "at least, a protocol could be signed on some of the points that seemed already agreed in principle, but the Ukrainian side took all these documents to study at home."

He added that they hope "next time we can take more significant steps. Negotiations will continue," he said.

He also said that the Russian delegates had to spend a lot of time pointing out that the humanitarian corridors, a point agreed upon at the last meeting, did not work at all.

They blamed the Ukrainian Armed Forces (FF.AA.), which did not respect the ceasefire or help the civilians to leave.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm local time on Monday, 172 attacks by the Armed Forces were recorded in the six humanitarian corridors announced by Russia. and the nationalists threatened the local population and foreign citizens not to leave the cities.

For his part, the advisor to the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Mykhaylo Podolyak, said via Twitter that this round of negotiations did not bring any results, except for what he called "small positive changes in improving the logistics of humanitarian corridors ". He added that "there will be changes in them and we will get more effective assistance to the people."

Before the start of the negotiations, Medinsky said that three blocks of issues will be discussed: internal political settlement, international humanitarian aspects and issues of military settlement.

For his part, Podolyak assured that the members of the delegations in the talks will not express the proposed terms until the "common positions" are agreed upon.

In this regard, the Russian embassy in Minsk confirmed the start of the third round of negotiations. "The third round of Russian-Ukrainian talks in Belarus has just started," read a message posted on his Telegram channel.

The first round of negotiations took place in the Gomel region, also on Belarusian territory, on February 28.

They then moved to Belovezhskaya Pushcha of the Brest region, where the second round of negotiations took place on March 3. The third round of talks between the Moscow and Kiev delegations is also taking place there.