War in Ukraine: Lavrov and Kuleba for talks in Turkey

Turkey has managed to organize the highest-level meeting of representatives of Russia and Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov and his Ukrainian counterpart Kuleba are meeting in Antalya.

So far, only negotiators from Ukraine and Russia have met. For the first time since the beginning of the war, the foreign ministers are speaking directly to each other – at the initiative of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. “We hope that this meeting will be a turning point. We want this meeting to be an important step towards peace and stability,” Cavusoglu said earlier this week. He will moderate the conversation.

In the meantime, both Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba have landed in Antalya, Turkey. Kuleba because he wants to talk “about stopping Russian hostilities and ending the war against Ukraine,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Kyiv wrote on Twitter.

Prevent further escalation

The Russian government recently spoke of “progress” in negotiations with the Ukrainian side and, unlike before, assured that it would not seek to overthrow the government in Kyiv. A spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry said the government wants to achieve its goals of Ukraine’s neutral status through talks and hopes the round of talks will make progress.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made it clear that he was willing to compromise and, in return for security guarantees, backed away from demands for his country to join NATO.

However, observers do not expect a breakthrough and a quick end to the violence in Ukraine. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly offered to mediate in the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv. Turkey is still able to talk “both with Ukraine and with Russia,” he stressed. The meeting in Antalya is about “preventing the crisis from developing into a tragedy”.