On March 10, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks in Turkey.
After the talks, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he was ready to continue today’s talks with Lavrov if the Russian side was prepared for a serious and substantive conversation “and not to repeat widespread propaganda stamps and narratives about Ukraine,” UNIAN writes.
Kuleba also said that Kyiv could not stop the war if the aggressor country had no desire to do so. He said that during the talks, he heard that the Russian Federation ties the cease-fire to the fulfillment of the demands put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.
“In this regard, I want to reiterate that Ukraine has not and will not surrender. We are ready for diplomacy, we are looking for diplomatic solutions, but as long as there are none, we will selflessly sacrifice ourselves, defend our land, our people from Russian aggression,” the minister stressed.
At the same time, he hopes that a humanitarian corridor from and to Mariupol will begin to work due to the negotiations. Kuleba hopes that the Russian Federation, purely out of human considerations and out of human sympathy for those who suffer from its bombs, will allow the functioning of the humanitarian corridor.
Lavrov acknowledged the attack on the maternity hospital
For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that the initiative to open daily humanitarian corridors remains in force. According to him, Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine is proceeding according to plan, and negotiations with Ukraine in Belarus are without alternative, Kommersant writes.
Lavrov also said that Russia is not planning to attack other countries:
“We are not planning to attack other countries, and we have not attacked Ukraine either.”
At the same time, he confirmed that Russian troops deliberately attacked the maternity hospital in Mariupol, saying that it had “long been taken over by the Azov battalion and other radicals.”
According to him, Russia “will solve its economic problems on its own” and come out of the crisis without “illusions that the West can be a reliable partner.”
