GENEVA, February 15. /TASS/. Russia really wants to take a step toward peace in Ukraine, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said, commenting on his talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow a week ago.
"After these talks, I got the impression that Russia really wants to take a step toward peace. The question is not whether it wants this, but at what price," he said in an interview with the SRF television channel.
"I think that if I had not visited Moscow a week ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that this meeting would now take place in Geneva," he said, referring to another round of talks on the Ukrainian settlement due to be held in Geneva on February 17 and 18.
On February 6, Lavrov held talks with Cassis, who arrived in Moscow in the capacity of Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) along with OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu. The talks focused on ways to get out of the current profound crisis of the organization. The OSCE officials also raised the issue of the organization’s role in promoting dialogue on the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.
On January 23, the first day of trilateral security consultations took place in Abu Dhabi. A second meeting was held on January 24. The Russian negotiating team was led by Igor Kostyukov, head of the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff. The Ukrainian part of the trilateral working group was headed by National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov. The second round of trilateral talks were also held in Abu Dhabi on February 4 and 5. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov announced another round of trilateral talks on Ukraine in Geneva on February 17 and 18. The Russian delegation will be led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky.