MAPUTO, June 1. /TASS/. Russia is open for talks with Ukraine and signing agreements that would lead to peace, speaker of Russia’s Federation Council (upper parliament house) Valentina Matviyenko said on Tuesday at a meeting with Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi.
A Federation Council delegation led by Matviyenko is on an official visit to Mozambique from May 30 to June 1.
"We are open for talks. I totally share your position that diplomatic, peaceful solutions are needed. But will for that is needed on both sides. We reiterate that we are ready for talks, for signing agreements that would stop the civil was in Ukraine and lead to peace, but we see no reaction from Kiev," she said.
She recalled that before the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine Russia had been in talks with Western partners and the United States demanding shared, indivisible security be ensured on the European continent, "as it is committed to paper in all international documents." "Regrettably, we did not receive an adequate response. And after Ukraine said it wanted to be a nuclear power and when we saw how it was being flooded with weapons, including offensive weapons, knowing that it was plotting the third armed attack on the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, naturally, we had no other way out, no other choice to ensure our security," she stressed.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky earlier told his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that he wanted to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian-Ukrainian talks have been conducted since February 28. Several meetings were organized in Belarus, then the sides continued negotiations in the videoconference format. The next offline round of talks took place in Istanbul on March 29. However on April 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists that Kiev had deviated from the previous agreements and drove the process into a dead end. On April 20, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow had handed over to Kiev a clearly-worded draft document on agreements and was waiting for a response.