* Photo: Presidency of Ukraine (via AA)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spoken about the ongoing war in Ukraine following Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022.
As reported by Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency (AA), Zelenskyy has also referred to the talks between the delegations from Russia and Ukraine in İstanbul's Beşiktaş district yesterday (March 29).
Zelenskyy said that the latest round of peace talks with Russia in İstanbul could be called "positive," but "the enemy is still on our territory".
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"The signals we hear from the negotiating platform can be called positive," Zelenskyy said on his Telegram account. "But these signals do not drown out the ruptures of Russian shells," added the President.
Noting that they see "all the risks" and "no reason to trust the words of certain representatives of a state that continues to fight for our destruction," President Zelenskyy said, "Ukrainians are not naive people. Ukrainians have already learned during these 34 days of invasion and over the past eight years of the war in Donbas that only a concrete result can be trusted".
The fresh round of talks in Istanbul lasted for 3 hours and the negotiators later held separate press briefings to inform about the outcome.
While Ukraine has called for several countries, including Turkey, to be guarantors in a possible future peace deal, Russia has said that it will significantly decrease military activities in the direction of the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv to increase trust for future negotiations.
Statement by Ukraine's top negotiator
Speaking to the press after yesterday's meeting, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top negotiator for Ukraine and an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that "the refusal of mutual military escalation over the issue of Crimea is key to a general cessation of hostilities".
Ukraine's state news agency Ukrinform reported earlier that the issues of the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Crimea would be taken out of the main part of an international agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine and discussed separately.
"As for such issues as Crimea, this is a separate clause of the agreement, in which we propose to enshrine the position of Ukraine and Russia to hold bilateral talks on the status of Crimea and Sevastopol for 15 years," the news agency quoted Podolyak as saying.
Noting that the talks held in İstanbul are important in terms of enabling Russia to consider many issues, Podolyak said that "the treaty on security guarantees in fact presupposes - not in theory, but in practice - to obtain an effective tool for protecting our territory and sovereignty".
"Let's say the leading armies of the world, including those with a nuclear constituent, become guarantor countries, assuming specific legal obligations - to intervene in any conflict on the territory of Ukraine, with the immediate supply of weapons," he said.
Podolyak further stated that Russia's presence as a signatory to the multilateral treaty along with other countries, including the United State, Turkey and Germany, "imposes many additional burdens on the Russians and allows us not to go for a complicated bilateral format".
Earlier rounds of Russia-Ukraine talks, held in person in Belarus or by video, failed to make any significant progress on ending the war. The talks at the Presidential Dolmabahçe office in İstanbul's Beşiktaş yesterday also did not bring about an agreement on a ceasefire.
'Turkey will continue mediating'
Presidency's Communications Director Fahrettin Altun has also made a statement about Turkey's diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire between the two neighboring countries, briefly saying, "We have no illusions about the prospects of an easy solution but Turkey will always push for peace and stability by facilitating and mediating between Ukraine and Russia," adding that "our region cannot afford more conflict and humanitarian crises".
Russia-Ukraine war and Turkey's diplomatic efforts
Earlier on February 24, explosions were reported in several Ukrainian provinces, including the capital Kyiv, after Russia's President Vladimir Putin announced a 'special military operation' in the Donbas region.
Tensions had started escalating late last year when Ukraine, the US and its allies accused Russia of amassing tens of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine. They claimed Russia was preparing to invade its western neighbor, which was consistently rejected by Moscow.
Defying threats of sanctions by the West, Moscow officially recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states in late February, followed by the start of a military operation in Ukraine on February 24.
President Vladimir Putin said the operation aims to protect people "subjected to genocide" by Kyiv and to "demilitarize and de-Nazify" Ukraine, while calling on the Ukrainian army to lay down its arms.
The Russia-Ukraine war, which started on February 24 with the invasion of Russia has drawn international condemnation, led to financial restrictions on Moscow, and spurred an exodus of global firms from Russia.
At least 1,179 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and 1,842 have been injured, according to estimates by the United Nations (UN), which has cautioned that the true figure is likely far higher. More than 3.9 million Ukrainians have also fled to several European countries, with millions more displaced inside the country, according to the UN refugee agency.
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As part of Turkey's diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire and permanent peace in the region, Turkey's Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu met Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Russia's capital Moscow and Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Ukraine's Lviv on March 16 and 17. The three foreign ministers also held a tripartite meeting on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey on March 10.
Since the war broke out on February 24, 2022, President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also met Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz and Poland's President Andrzej Duda.
In a phone call on March 27, Erdoğan and Putin discussed the latest developments and negotiation process in the Russia-Ukraine war. They agreed that the next meeting of the negotiating teams of Russia and Ukraine would take place in İstanbul. Accordingly, the first round of talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in İstanbul on March 29. (SD)
