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Military operation in Ukraine

Treaty with Ukraine not ready to be discussed at highest level — Russia’s chief negotiator

The Ukrainian side became more realistic in approaching the issues related to Ukraine’s neutral and non-nuclear status, Vladimir Medinsky noted

Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky Sergei Karpukhin/TASS

Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky

© Sergei Karpukhin/TASS

MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. A draft of a treaty between Russia and Ukraine is not yet ready "to be presented at the top-level meeting," while Ukraine became more realistic in approaching the issue of its neutral and non-nuclear status, Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky who heads the Russian delegation thinks.

"The Ukrainian side became more realistic in approaching the issues related to Ukraine’s neutral and non-nuclear status but the draft of the agreement is not ready to be presented at the top-level meeting," he wrote on his Telegram channel on Sunday.

Commenting on the remarks by David Arakhamia, a member of the Ukrainian delegation, who stated that Russia accepted Ukraine’s stance with the exception of Crimea, he noted that Russia’s point of view with regards to the status of Crimea and Donbass remained unchanged. Medinsky added that Moscow had been trying to achieve Ukraine’s neutral and unaffiliated status as well as security guarantees for it since 2014.

He stated that talks between Russia’s and Ukraine’s delegations would continue on Monday while work on the text of the agreement and between the heads of delegations continued in a remote format on Friday and Saturday.

On March 29 in Istanbul, the first face-to-face talks in over three weeks between the delegations of Moscow and Kiev took place. The Russian side assessed the results of this round as "positive progress." Following the talks, Medinsky said that Russia received Ukraine’s written proposals containing provisions on Ukraine’s non-nuclear and unaffiliated status.

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