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Kremlin regrets Minsk agreements affected by Kiev’s actions

The Kremlin spokesman again refuted media interpretation of his words about the alleged non-public meetings between Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart

MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. It would make sense to arrange contacts between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents for the sake of achieving specific results. In the meantime, Moscow can only regret Kiev’s reluctance to implement the Minsk agreements.

"Any contacts are held for the sake of achieving specific results," Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said answering a question on the need for a meeting between the two presidents. "Now that we see Kiev’s reluctance to follow the path of implementing the Minsk accords, but, on the contrary, see steps that impair the prospects for the implementation of these agreements, we express our deep regret."

The Kremlin spokesman again refuted media interpretation of his words about the alleged non-public meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Pyotr Poroshenko. "I did not say anything about non-public meetings between Putin and Poroshenko. This is a totally wrong interpretation of my words," he stressed.

According to Peskov, he spoke about the president’s work schedule in general, "which abounds in events that are not put on a public track."

"The president holds a lot of meetings and contacts of non-public nature, and we don’t inform about them. This is a routine practice. The president’s work day …is much more rich and busy than you can see on television. So, indeed, there can be meetings we don’t report to the mass media," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 TV channel broadcast on Sunday.

Some media outlets interpreted these remarks as a statement about non-public contacts between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents. Later in the day, Peskov refuted this interpretation in an interview with TASS.