Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba today began talks in Turkey in the first such high-level contact since Moscow invaded its neighbour, officials from both sides and their hosts said. The ministers began talks on the sidelines of a diplomatic forum in the southern Turkish resort of Antalya, joined by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, a Turkish official told AFP in comments confirmed by the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministries.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba will be joined at the meeting Thursday morning by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, with NATO member Turkey keen to maintain strong relations with both sides despite the conflict.
- Senior Ukrainian officials, including the defence minister, have held a sequence of meetings with a Russian delegation in Belarus largely devoted to humanitarian issues, but Moscow has not sent any ministers to the talks.
- The visit to Antalya is the first trip abroad for the Russian foreign minister since Russia was isolated by the Western world with biting sanctions that have also targeted President Vladimir Putin's long-serving top diplomat.
- The meeting is likely to be tense after Ukraine's foreign minister in an interview last week described his Russian counterpart as the "Ribbentrop of his time" about the foreign minister of Nazi Germany in World War II.
- Turkey is a traditional ally of Ukraine and has supplied the country with Bayraktar drones -- made by a firm whose technology director is Erdogan's own son-in-law -- which Kyiv has deployed in the conflict.
- Turkey is seeking to maintain good relations with Russia, on which Turkey depends heavily for gas imports and tourism revenues.
- Erdogan called the Russian invasion "unacceptable" but at the same time, Ankara has not joined Western sanctions against Moscow and refused to close its airspace to Russian planes.
- Meanwhile, on Thursday, a Russian airstrike devasted a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under the rubble.
- Zelenskiy repeated his call for the West to tighten sanctions on Russia "so that they sit down at the negotiating table and end this brutal war". The bombing of the children's hospital, he said, was "proof that a genocide of Ukrainians is taking place".
- Besides, Russian aircraft bombed Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 west of Kyiv, hitting two hospitals, including a children’s hospital. Artillery fire continued pounding the suburbs of Kyiv and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, on Wednesday.
- The Ukraine-Russia war has sparked Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than two million people crossing Ukraine's borders, according to the United Nations.
WHAT ARE WESTERN COUNTRIES DOING TO HELP UKRAINE?
Western countries are sending arms and other aid to Ukraine and have ratcheted up sanctions on Russia in hopes of convincing Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back.
The US has slammed the door on a plan to provide MiG fighter jets to Ukraine, even though a second country, calling it a “high-risk" venture that would not significantly change the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Air Force.
Poland had said it was prepared to hand over MiG-29 planes to NATO that could then be delivered to Ukraine, US intelligence concluded that it could trigger a “significant" Russian reaction.
Cyprus said it sent its first 165-ton batch of humanitarian aid to Poland for distribution in Ukraine, including food, sleeping bags, tents, shoes, and other items. And donations poured into a collection center in Paris for the people of Ukraine, including baby food and other aid.
