MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. Russia doesn’t rule out that the information provocation around the situation in Bucha could be an attempt to disrupt dialogue between Moscow and Kiev, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Tuesday.
He said the provocation, which involves a staged massacre in Bucha, isn’t the first effort by Ukrainian propaganda to smear Russian troops and set up an emotional backdrop for passing anti-Russian political decisions.
"We don’t rule out that the point of these information provocations is to try to disrupt the diplomatic efforts made by Russia as part of the bilateral dialogue with Kiev representatives," he said at a special session of the OSCE’s permanent council, according to his speech on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website. "Cynical and false provocations are used by unscrupulous politicians in Ukraine and in some Western countries primarily in order to fan the flames of Russophobia."
Russian-Ukrainian negotiations began on February 28, four days after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Several meetings took place in Belarus before talks continued via video link. On March 10, Turkey organized a meeting of Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and Dmitry Kuleba on the sidelines of a diplomatic conference in Turkey’s city of Antalya. On March 29, a face-to-face round of negotiations took place in Istanbul. Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian presidential aide, stated following the talks that the Russian delegation received clearly phrased proposals from Ukraine that will be studied and reported to the country's leadership. Medinsky on Sunday said that the draft treaty between Russia and Ukraine isn’t yet ready "to be on the table for a summit meeting," while Ukraine has become more realistic about its neutral and non-nuclear status.