US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday suggested that Ukraine and Russia will have to converge on a table to negotiate a settlement and end the conflict.
“I think eventually this conflict will be decided at the negotiation table but when that point comes it is hard to predict still,” he said after another meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
“We are going continue to work to put Ukraine in the best possible position” for peace talks, he pledged.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) that Russia had never rejected talks on Ukraine but these talks should be based on the Istanbul agreements rather than some “ephemeral demands.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that the only meeting he had with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba that took place on March 2022 in Turkey lacked anything new and constructive.
“The only time I saw him on the case was at a diplomatic forum in Antalya. This is an annual event organized by Turkey. Mevlut Cavusoglu was then foreign minister, he called and said he really wanted me to arrive, because the Ukrainian side, Dmitry Kuleba in particular, proposed the Turkish one an idea of meeting with me,” Lavrov said in an interview with RBC.
“They asked that this meeting be not one-on-one, rather in the presence of the Turkish minister. Given that we had hardly ever engaged in dialogues, I clarified how serious it was. Very serious, they assured me, for Kuleba said he really had something to convey.”
Lavrov added that during the meeting Kuleba delivered nothing except the official position.
“Later I asked Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu where the very message he [Kuleba] wanted to convey was. The latter was also surprised,” the Russian foreign minister pointed out.
“Personally, I had not thought there might be any possible negotiation. The negotiation process is underway. By that time it took place in Belarus. Let’s proceed from the fact that all the details could be discussed there, I told them.”
