MOSCOW, June 24. /TASS/. Russia will not accept a halt along the front line as a condition for starting negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"We are always ready [for negotiations on Ukraine], but I repeat once again that when we sit down at the negotiating table, if there are any reasonable ideas, proposals, or suitable people on the other side, we will not trust anyone's word," he said.
"They still say to us: ‘Let's have a ceasefire along the line of contact, and then negotiations.’ No, we already did that when we agreed in Istanbul, initialed it, and as a gesture of goodwill, we stopped firing and even - as [Russian] President Vladimir Putin has said more than once - we withdrew units from Kiev. They immediately received [former British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson [who disrupted the agreement] and Bucha."
On March 30, 2022, Russia pulled back from the town of Bucha and from Kiev’s vicinity as a goodwill gesture during negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul. On March 31, the head of the local administration confirmed this before cameras. A few days later, Western television broadcast footage that showed dead bodies lying in the streets, in contrast to earlier recordings. In Russia, a criminal case was opened for the dissemination of false information about the Russian army.