News Desk :
The third round of talks between Ukraine and Russia has started in Belarus, state media agency Russia 24 announced on air.
The location for this event has not been disclosed. The first round of talks, on February 28, and the second set, on March 3, both took place in Belarus.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba will meet Thursday in Antalya, Turkey, according to the Russian foreign ministry. This has not yet been confirmed by the Ukrainian foreign ministry.
It is understood the focus of the talks will once again be humanitarian corridors – to allow Ukrainian civilians to escape from military action as heavy Russian shelling of city centres continues in the south and the east of the country, BBC reports.
A previous attempt to establish humanitarian corridors on Saturday collapsed when the ceasefire failed to hold.
Overnight on Sunday, a new proposal from Russia was branded “unacceptable” by Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, after it became clear that people fleeing Kyiv would be offered safe passage to Russia’s ally Belarus, while those in Kharkiv will have a corridor leading only to Russia itself.
Of the four cities mentioned, only the smaller ones – Mariupol and Sumy – have evacuation routes that lead to other parts of Ukraine. A spokesman for Ukraine’s President Zelensky called it “a completely immoral story”.
