Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Sunday that he will insist on assurances that his country's sovereignty and territorial integrity will be respected at the next round of peace negotiations with Russia set to take place in Turkey as Kyiv "carefully" considers Moscow's demand of neutrality, reports TurkicWorld to the reference DailySabah.
"Our priorities in the negotiations are known: sovereignty, territorial integrity of Ukraine are beyond doubt," Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address. "Effective guarantees of security are a must. Obviously, our goal is peace and return to normal life in our country as soon as possible."
The new talks – starting in Turkey on either Monday or Tuesday, according to conflicting reports – come after the Russian military said it would begin focusing on eastern Ukraine in a move some saw as a scaling back of Moscow's ambitions.
"Today, during another round of video negotiations, it was decided to hold the next in-person round of the two delegations in Turkey on March 28-30," Davyd Arakhamia, a Ukraine negotiator and politician wrote on Facebook.
Russia's lead negotiator in the conflict, Vladimir Medinsky, confirmed the upcoming talks with Ukraine, but gave a slightly different time frame, saying they would start Tuesday and end Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a senior Ukrainian official said ahead of talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Turkey that he did not expect any major breakthrough.
"I don't think there will be any breakthrough on the main issues," interior ministry adviser Vadym Denysenko said on Monday.
Russia and Ukraine failed to make a breakthrough on March 10 in Antalya in their first top-level talks since Moscow launched its invasion in late February.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met for talks in the Turkish resort town of Antalya, which Cavuşoğlu also attended. The talks were largely inconclusive, but Ankara considers the fact that they took place at all a success.
Neither intense diplomacy nor steadily mounting sanctions have persuaded Putin to halt the war.
