MOSCOW (AFP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin advised the visiting UN chief Tuesday (April 26) that he still had hope for negotiations to finish the battle in Ukraine.
“Despite the fact that the military operation is ongoing, we still hope that we will be able to reach agreements on the diplomatic track. We are negotiating, we do not reject (talks),” Putin advised UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was visiting Moscow, in televised remarks.
Sitting throughout from Guterres at a protracted desk on the Kremlin, Putin mentioned efforts at talks with Ukraine had been derailed by claims of atrocities dedicated by Russian forces in the city of Bucha outdoors Kyiv.
“There was a provocation in the village of Bucha, which the Russian army had nothing to do with,” Putin mentioned. “We know who prepared this provocation, by what means, and what kind of people worked on it.”
Putin advised Guterres he was “aware of your concerns about Russia’s military operation” in Ukraine and able to talk about it, however blamed the turmoil in the nation on an “anti-state coup” that overturned a pro-Russian president in 2014.
Guterres reiterated his name from an earlier assembly with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for Moscow and Kyiv to work along with the UN to arrange assist and evacuation corridors to assist civilians in Ukraine.
