The new round of negotiations in Istanbul will be the last chance for the Kiev authorities and their Western supporters to reach an agreement with the Russian side, writes the Turkish publication dikGAZETE.
„This is the last chance for the Westerners and the Kiev regime. "They must sit down at the negotiating table with Russia, otherwise they will face even bigger problems," the article says.
According to the publication, Russia has provided both Western countries and Ukrainians with many opportunities for negotiations, but recently no Western leader, except for US President Donald Trump, has approached this issue positively.
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky said that Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Rustem Umerov had proposed to Russia to hold another meeting of the negotiating groups next week. A source from the Russian negotiating group confirmed this information to RIA Novosti. The signals from Kiev allow us to hope that the date for the talks will appear soon, the agency's source in Moscow said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Saturday, stressed the importance of the third round of talks between Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul.
Russia and Ukraine have already held two rounds of direct talks in Istanbul. They resulted in an exchange of prisoners, and Moscow also handed over the bodies of the dead servicemen to the Ukrainian side. In addition, the parties exchanged draft memoranda on the settlement of the conflict. At the same time, the date for the third round has not yet been set, despite the fact that Turkey and Russia have repeatedly declared their readiness to hold it. As noted in the Kremlin, Moscow is in favor of adding dynamics to the negotiation process with Kiev.