A third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Belovezhskaya Pushcha has ended, the Russian Embassy in Minsk wrote on its Telegram channel.
"A third round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Belarus has ended," the embassy blogged.
The talks lasted about three hours.
Russia’s chief negotiator, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, said the third round of negotiations, held today in Belarus’s Brest region, did not meet expectations. "We had long discussed the problem of humanitarian corridors today about which we agreed at the previous meeting but which absolutely did not work because of the refusal of Ukraine's armed forces at the spots to implement the orders of their commanders," Medinsky said.
According to him, the Ukrainian delegation has collected the documentation proposed by Russia for signing, and intends to revisit the matter at the next meeting.
"We arrived with a big set of written documents. We had specific agreements, drafts, proposals and we were hoping to sign today some of the points which seem to have been agreed on in principle, that we would at least sign a protocol. However, the Ukrainian side took all these documents to read at home. It could not sign anything on the spot," Medinsky told journalists. "Well, and said we will return to this matter, probably next week," he said.
Chairman of the State Duma’s committee Leonid Slutsky remarked that the next round would be held in Belarus in the near future.
Ukrainian presidential office adviser Mikhail Podolyak said in a video uploaded to Twitter that the two sides had agreed to some changes to the logistics, which, he said, would make assistance to civilians more effective, but did not disclose the details.
On February 28, the first round of Russian-Ukrainian talks took place in the Gomel region. It lasted five hours. The second round was held on March 3, also in Belarus.
