Russia Says Will Scale Down Military Activity Near Kyiv Capital at Istanbul Meet

After peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow delegations in Turkish city Istanbul on Tuesday, Russia said it would “radically reduce military activity” around the Ukrainian capital. It is now more than a month since the Russian President ordered troops into Ukraine in an effort to topple the democratically elected government in Kyiv. The delegations from both the countries, currently engaged in war, held face-to-face meetings in Turkey. Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said both sides had a ‘meaningful discussion’.

Russian Deputy Defence Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin spoke to reporters after talks were held between delegations from the two countries at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. Fomin said, “In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing (an) agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions”.

While the Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said there were now “sufficient” conditions for a direct meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelnsky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Arakhamia called for "an international mechanism of security guarantees where guarantor countries will act in a similar way to NATO's article number five -- and even more firmly".

Kyiv negotiators also called for an “international” accord to guarantee Ukrainian security. The Ukrainian President has said any constitutional changes related to security guarantees would also be decided through a referendum and not by him alone.

Last week, the Turkish President told mediapersons that Ukraine and Russia seemed to have agreed on four of the six topics discussed during earlier negotiations. These would include Russia’s demands that Ukraine stay out of NATO and adopt Russian as its official language.