Russia, Ukraine Talks Falter as Scope for Diplomatic Solution Narrows
KYIV, Ukraine—Russian and Ukrainian negotiators said they failed to reach an agreement after nine hours of talks in Berlin on Thursday over ways to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and resolve the monthslong crisis triggered by Russia’s troop buildup along Ukrainian borders.
Dmitry Kozak,
the Russian representative at the talks involving France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, said the gap between the parties was such that they couldn’t even agree on a joint statement.
He said the talks would likely continue among more junior officials until sufficient progress could be made to work toward a summit of the countries’ leaders, a goal he said was unrealistic at present.
“The Ukrainians presented a very hard position,” Mr. Kozak said. He praised earlier efforts by Western leaders such as French President
Emmanuel Macron,
who visited his Russian counterpart
on Monday, but said that the Ukrainian delegation was unwilling to repeat the language of the 2015 Minsk-2 accord that stopped most of the hostilities in its Donbas region.
“My impression was that the Western diplomacy had no impact on the Ukrainian position in the talks,” said Mr. Kozak, who is deputy head of the presidential administration of the Kremlin.
He said the Ukrainian side asked for a break in the talks to consider their position. The French and German representatives, who sponsor the negotiations in the so-called Normandy format, agreed to work toward a relaunch of the talks.
Andriy Yermak,
Kyiv’s representative at the talks, said, “There are major differences. But there’s a willingness to continue talking.”
Mr. Yermak said future discussions would likely focus on prisoner exchanges between Kyiv and Russian-backed separatists and the reopening of crossings between Ukraine and the territories under rebel control.
The talks come amid rising tensions on Ukraine’s borders. Russia and ally Belarus are conducting joint military exercises that Russia’s Defense Ministry has described as training to repel “foreign aggression.” Ukraine’s armed forces began their own drills along the Russian and Belarusian borders in response.
In a sign of the gulf that still separates the West and Russia, Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov
was critical of the conversation when he emerged from a meeting with his British counterpart on Thursday.
Moscow wanted “not just excuses, but a concrete response from the West to our proposals, which presuppose the inadmissibility of strengthening someone’s security at the expense of someone else’s security,” Mr. Lavrov said. “I cannot say that we have any points of contact here.”
In Brussels, U.K. Prime Minister
told reporters after meeting with NATO Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg
on Thursday that a war in Ukraine would be…
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