MOSCOW, August 28 (RIA Novosti) – No meetings are scheduled between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Thursday.
“There isn’t a working meeting scheduled so far with Petro Poroshenko,” Peskov said.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin spokesman stated that the two leaders agree that a dialogue is necessary, but it is too early to speak about the timeframe and format of the future talks.
On August 26, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko in their first encounter since June during multi-party talks in the Belarussian capital of Minsk.
The multilateral meeting of the leaders of the Customs Union members, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the Ukrainian leader and representatives of the European Union was dedicated to the discussion of issues such as the conflict in Ukraine, the humanitarian crisis in the east of the country, the possibility of talks between the Ukrainian government and the country’s eastern regions, as well as Ukraine’s association agreement with the European Union.
Putin and Poroshenko have acknowledged the importance of international efforts on the de-escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, including the involvement of the contact group, which is expected to resume its work in the near future.
The military operation, launched by Kiev in mid-April to suppress independence supporters in Ukraine’s southeastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk has recently become extremely violent.
As the situation in Luhansk and Donetsk regions worsened, thousands of civilians found themselves trapped in the warring regions without electricity, food, medicine or drinking water.
Russia has repeatedly condemned the operation and urged Kiev to stop the bloodshed in the region, which has already claimed thousands of lives, and sent a humanitarian convoy to war-torn eastern Ukraine with about 2,000 tons of aid.
