Antalya, Turkey – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian counterpart Dmitry Kuleba began talks in Turkey on Thursday in the first high-level contact since Moscow invaded its neighbor, officials on both sides said. Along with the ministers were Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoλουlu and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. he said was also heading to Antalya for meetings amid a flurry safety concern of Ukrainenuclear power plants.
Turkey has been pushing for weeks to play a mediating role in the conflict. But analysts fear that there is little chance of significant progress in the meeting. Pictures of the meeting showed the delegations of Russia, Turkey and Ukraine sitting around a table, with each minister accompanied by only two other officials.
- U.S. officials say 6,000 Russians have been killed in Ukraine
Kuleba said in a video on Wednesday that his expectations for the talks were “limited” and that their success would depend on “instructions and instructions under Lavrov” from the Kremlin.
Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Brochure / REUTERS
The meeting takes place against the backdrop of Ukrainian and international outrage after one attack on a child and maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol which, according to Kyiv, killed at least three people, among them a young girl. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the strike “brutal.”
CBS News senior correspondent Charlie D’Agata said the massive airstrike destroyed a fragile ceasefire in Mariupol late Wednesday afternoon that was supposed to allow civilians to leave the hit city. Emergency crews and soldiers tried to evacuate the injured, including pregnant women, from the hospital. The eruption destroyed the complex inside and out, and the size and depth of the crater and the surrounding debris were clear evidence of its savagery.
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According to D’Agata, Mariupol, a key port city on the southern coast of Ukraine, has been under heavy Russian bombardment for days, cutting off electricity and water to more than 400,000 people. Officials say at least 1,200 civilians have been killed in the city since the start of the war, and images show city workers placing corpses in a mass grave.
Ukrainian officials say at least seven more civilians have been killed in further Russian artillery fire overnight.
Claims and warnings about biological weapons
The White House warned Wednesday that Russia could escalate the war either by using biological or chemical weapons, or by claiming that Ukrainian forces had used the so-called “fake flag” to use it as a pretext for further violence.
Russian officials have accused the United States of working on covert biological and chemical weapons programs inside Ukraine earlier this week. On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that documents provided by Ukrainian workers at the laboratory showed that Washington “planned to organize work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles in Ukraine in 2022.”
“According to the documents, experiments with bat coronavirus samples were carried out in biological laboratories set up and funded in Ukraine,” the Defense Ministry said. “The purpose of this and other Pentagon-funded biological research in Ukraine was to establish a mechanism for the covert spread of the deadliest pathogens.”
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Wednesday dismissed Russia’s allegations as “absurd” and said they could be part of a Russian effort to lay the groundwork for such weapons. “All this is an obvious ploy by Russia to try to justify its further deliberate, unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine.”
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“Now that Russia has made these false allegations and China has ostensibly supported this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine or set up a false flag business using them.” , he said. .
With the violence on the ground in Ukraine and the allegations and warnings of a duel from Washington and Moscow, hopes for any significant progress in the talks in Turkey were low, but this meeting is only one of the diplomatic initiatives.
Israel is seeking a mediation through direct talks with President Vladimir Putin, and French President Emanuel Macron is also frequently calling the Kremlin chief.
“There is very little hope today and we must seize it … without being naive,” French European Minister Clement Beaune told France Inter radio. “The goal is the same: to stop the fighting, but we have to put a lot of pressure on Russia.”
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- Joe Biden
- Ukraine
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- Vladimir Putin
- Volodymyr Zelensky
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