The third round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, held on Monday (7), ended with small advances regarding the logistics of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, said the adviser to the Office of the Ukrainian Presidency, Mikhail Podoliak.
Also according to a post by the advisor on his Telegram account, the parties held “intense consultations” about a ceasefire and security guarantees.
The new meeting between the representatives of the two countries took place in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, in the Belarusian region of Brest, close to the Polish border.
The meeting came after planned evacuations failed on Monday for the third consecutive time, due to violation of the humanitarian ceasefire announced by Russia.
For his part, Russian chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said that Moscow expects humanitarian corridors to start operating on Tuesday (8). “We have said this clearly. We hope that tomorrow these corridors will finally start to work. The Ukrainian side has given us guarantees of this”, declared Medinsky, according to the agency “Interfax”.
temporary ceasefire
Russia this morning announced a temporary ceasefire starting at 10 am (0400 GMT) to open humanitarian corridors in Kiev, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Sumy with six routes, four of which would end in Russian cities such as Rostov-on-Don. route to the south) and Belgorod (to the east). The evacuation plan for Kiev also includes passage through the territory of Belarus (Gomel and Gden) with subsequent air transport to Russia.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, said today that these routes are “absurd, cynical and unacceptable”.
The head of Russia’s National Defense Control Center, Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, told Interfax that the Russian side had observed the evacuation routes with drones and accused Ukraine of “not having carried out a single practical step for the preparation of humanitarian convoys”.
“No one has reached the open humanitarian corridors,” he said, again accusing the Ukrainian “nationalists” of having prevented the evacuation. “It has become clear that the nationalists, under threat of physical violence, simply do not allow civilians and foreign nationals to leave these locations,” he added.
Still on the Russian side, Medinsky said that negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation on an agreement to end the “special military operation” in the neighboring country will continue, although Moscow’s expectations have not materialized.
“Our expectations with the negotiations did not materialize, but we hope that next time we will be able to make more significant progress. The negotiations will continue,” he said, according to the Russian news agency “TASS”.
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