Russia, Ukraine close to agreement: Turkey

Turkey on Sunday said Russia and Ukraine made progress on their negotiations to halt the invasion and the two warring sides were close to an agreement.

“Of course, it is not an easy thing to come to terms with while the war is going on, while civilians are killed, but we would like to say that momentum is still gained,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in live comments from the southern Turkish province of Antalya.

“We see that the parties are close to an agreement.”

Cavusoglu this week visited Russia and Ukraine as Turkey, which has strong bonds with the two sides, has tried to position itself as a mediator.

Ankara hosted the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine in Antalya last week.

Cavusoglu said Turkey was in contact with the negotiating teams from the two countries but he refused to divulge the details of the talks as “we play an honest mediator and facilitator role.”

In an interview with daily Hurriyet, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the sides were negotiating six points: Ukraine’s neutrality, disarmament and security guarantees, the so-called “de-Nazification”, removal of obstacles on the use of the Russian language in Ukraine, the status of the breakaway Donbass region and the status of Crimea annexed by Russia in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly appealed for peace, urging Russia to accept “meaningful” talks for an end to the invasion.

“This is the time to meet, to talk, time for renewing territorial integrity and fairness for Ukraine,” he said, in his latest video posted on social media on Saturday.

Turkey said it was ready to host a meeting between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We are working day and night for peace,” Cavusoglu said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday renewed his plea for talks with his Russian counterpart, taking to US television to say negotiations were the only way to “end this war.”

“I’m ready for negotiations with him,” Zelensky told CNN show “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” referring to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose deadly invasion of Ukraine is in its fourth week.

“I think without negotiations we cannot end this war,” the Ukrainian leader said through a translator.

The reiteration of Zelensky’s call for peace talks came as he and other Ukrainians accused Russia of committing war crimes after authorities said the invading forces had bombed a school sheltering some 400 people in the besieged city of Mariupol.

“Russian forces have come to exterminate us, to kill us,” said Zelensky.

The leader, who has emerged as a national hero for his very public stance against Putin and his forces, has spoken of Ukrainians’ fierce resistance to the invasion and told Russia that several thousand of its soldiers have died in battle so far.

“If there is just one percent chance for us to stop this war, I think that we need to take this chance... to have the possibility of negotiating, the possibility of talking to Putin,” he said.

“If these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third world war.”

Zelensky repeatedly has warned of the potential for the Russia-Ukraine conflict to mushroom into an all-out global war.

The crisis in Ukraine, in which Putin has sought to eradicate pro-Western leanings in the ex-Soviet state, has already triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.