LAHORE MIRROR (Monitoring Desk)– Russia has announced it will “drastically reduce” military combat operations in two key areas of Ukraine “to boost mutual trust” in peace talks.
The decision to scale back operations around the capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv is the first sign of tangible progress in talks since Russia invaded on 24 February.
But the US has reacted with scepticism.
Russia had already refocused its military campaign on “liberating” Ukraine’s eastern regions.
It has suffered a series of setbacks to the north-west of the capital, Kyiv, and is also seeking to capture a land corridor along the south coast, from Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, to the Russian border.
Officials in Washington said they had already seen the Russians draw away from Kyiv, but they were still pounding the capital with air strikes and the US had little confidence that it marked any significant shift or meaningful retreat.
The US had not seen “signs of real seriousness” from Russia in pursuing peace talks, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who pointed to the continued “brutalisation” of Ukraine’s people.
During the talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul, Ukraine proposed to become a neutral state in exchange for security guarantees. A key aim of Russia’s invasion was to stop Ukraine joining the Nato alliance and Russian officials said the talks had moved to a practical stage.
Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin, who was in Istanbul, told Russian TV that as “Ukraine’s neutrality and non-nuclear status and security guarantees” had progressed, the defence ministry had taken the decision to cut its operations dramatically in the two areas to “create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and for the signing of the aforementioned agreement”.
Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Chaly told reporters that its offer of neutrality was a chance to “restore the territorial integrity and security of Ukraine through diplomatic and political means”. Ukraine’s aim was to “fix its status as a de facto non-bloc and non-nuclear state in the form of permanent neutrality”.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said that Russia had twisted the knife in Ukraine and that “we must judge Putin’s regime by their actions not their words”.
Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said talks had been “meaningful” and Ukraine’s proposals on neutrality would be put to President Vladimir Putin, holding out the possibility of a summit involving Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. However, he made clear that before that could happen a treaty would have to be drafted and approved by negotiators, and then signed by foreign ministers.
SOURCE: BBC NEWS
