KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th January, 2021) Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Monday that the window of opportunity to negotiate with Russia on the situation� in the Donbas region of Ukraine remains open.
"In the short term, they [Russia] may be satisfied with the current state of affairs, but I believe that the window of opportunity to negotiate with Russia [on Donbas region] has not closed. If they saw that the circumstances changed, they would easily return to constructive [negotiation]," Kuleba said in an interview with the Ukrainian Obozrevatel news agency.
The minister said that the negotiations on the issue were suspended due to the US presidential election, adding that Russia "is always waiting for an auspicious time to settle the situation on its own terms."
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held their first in-person talks during the last Normandy Four summit held in Paris on December 9, 2019. The summit agreed on the exchange of conflict-related detainees, a full ceasefire, and coordination of new areas for the disengagement of forces in Donbas. The seventh meeting within the format was planned for March 2020 in the German capital of Berlin, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 fears.
In April 2014, the Ukrainian authorities launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and its neighboring Luhansk People's Republic after they proclaimed independence from Ukraine and refused to recognize the new central government, which came to power after what they considered to be a coup. According to the United Nations, roughly 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
