Antalya, Turkey — Russian Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba met Thursday in Turkey within the first such high-level contact since Moscow invaded its neighbor. Talking after the talks, Kuleba instructed reporters there was "no progress" towards a cease-fire.
"We additionally talked on the cease-fire however no progress was achieved on that," Dmytro Kuleba mentioned, describing the dialogue as "tough" and accusing his counterpart of bringing little greater than "conventional narratives" to the desk.
The pinnacle of the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company mentioned earlier he was additionally heading to Antalya for conferences amid mounting concern over the protection of Ukraine's nuclear vitality vegetation, however it was unclear when he was resulting from arrive or who he would possibly meet with.
Even earlier than the talks started, analysts feared there have been slim probabilities of any breakthrough. Pictures of the assembly confirmed the Russian, Turkish and Ukrainian delegations sitting round a desk, with every minister accompanied by simply two different officers.
The assembly came about in opposition to the background of Ukrainian and worldwide outrage after a Russian assault on a kids's and maternity hospital within the besieged Ukrainian metropolis of Mariupol which, in keeping with Kyiv, killed at the least three individuals, together with a younger woman. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky known as the strike an "atrocity."
Talking after his talks with Kuleba on Thursday in Antalya, Russia's Lavrov dismissed the "outcry" over the hospital assault as propaganda, as Britain accused Moscow of a "struggle crime" with the strike.
After his dialogue with Lavrov on Thursday, Ukraine's Kuleba mentioned he was ready to satisfy his counterpart once more to "proceed engagement" aimed toward first establishing a cease-fire and humanitarian hall for Mariupol, calling town probably the most dire humanitarian disaster in his nation, after which to finish the struggle.
Lavrov indicated that separate talks between lower-level delegations from Ukraine and Russia, which have been going down for days in Belarus, have been the main target of efforts to attain a cease-fire.
"We want to conduct our negotiations on the Belarusian facet in a really severe means," the Russian envoy mentioned.
Organic weapons claims and warnings
The White Home has warned this week that Russia may additional escalate the struggle both by utilizing organic or chemical weapons, or by claiming Ukrainian forces had accomplished so in a so-called "false flag" assault to make use of as a pretext for additional violence.
Russian officers began accusing the U.S. of engaged on covert organic and chemical weapons packages inside Ukraine earlier this week. On Thursday, the Russian Protection Ministry claimed paperwork supplied by Ukrainian lab staff confirmed Washington "deliberate to arrange work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022."
"In keeping with the paperwork, experiments with samples of bat coronavirus have been carried out in organic laboratories created and funded in Ukraine," the Protection Ministry claimed. "The aim of those and different Pentagon-funded organic researches in Ukraine was the creation of mechanism for the covert unfold of the deadliest pathogens."
White Home press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday dismissed Russia's claims as "preposterous" and mentioned they might be a part of an try by Russia to put the groundwork for utilizing such weapons itself. "That is all an apparent ploy by Russia to attempt to attempt to justify its additional premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified assault on Ukraine."
"Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should always all be looking out for Russia to presumably use chemical or organic weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation utilizing them," she mentioned.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby additionally refuted the claims as "absurd" and "basic Russian propaganda."
"They're laughable. And you realize, within the phrases of my Irish Catholic grandfather, a bunch of malarkey," Kirby instructed reporters on Wednesday. "We aren't, not growing organic or chemical weapons inside Ukraine. It isn't occurring."
With the violence on the bottom in Ukraine and the dueling claims and warnings from Washington and Moscow, hope for any main breakthrough within the talks in Turkey was at all times low, however that assembly was simply one in all a lot of diplomatic initiatives.
Israel is searching for to dealer an answer by means of direct talks with President Vladimir Putin, and French President Emmanuel Macron can also be regularly phoning the Kremlin chief.
"There may be right now a really slim hope and we have to seize it ... with out being naive," France's Europe Minister Clement Beaune instructed France Inter radio. "The aim is identical; that the preventing stops, however we have to put nice strain on Russia."