ANKARA
\nTurkey\u2019s foreign minister said in an interview published on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine were nearing agreement on \u201ccritical\u201d issues and he was hopeful for a ceasefire if the two sides did not backtrack from progress achieved so far.
\nRussian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. President Vladimir Putin has called Russia\u2019s actions a \u201cspecial operation\u201d meant to demilitarize Ukraine and purge it of what he sees as dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and the West say Putin launched an aggressive war of choice.
\nForeign ministers Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine met in the Turkish resort town of Antalya earlier this month with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also attending. The discussions did not yield concrete results.
\nBut Cavusoglu, who also travelled to Russia and Ukraine last week for talks with Lavrov and Kuleba, told Turkish daily Hurriyet that there had been \u201crapprochement in the positions of both sides on important subjects, critical subjects\u201d.
\n\u201cWe can say we are hopeful for a ceasefire if the sides do not take a step back from the current positions,\u201d he said, without elaborating on the issues.
\nTurkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, speaking to al Jazeera television, said the two sides were getting closer on four key issues. He cited Russia\u2019s demand for Ukraine to renounce ambitions to join NATO, demilitarisation, what Russia has referred to as \u201cde-nazification\u201d, and the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine.
\nUkraine and the West have dismissed Russian references to \u201cneo-Nazis\u201d in Ukraine\u2019s democratically elected leadership as baseless propaganda, and Kalin said such references were offensive to Kyiv.
\nKyiv and Moscow reported some progress in talks last week toward a political formula that would guarantee Ukraine\u2019s security, while keeping it outside NATO, though each sides accused the other of dragging matters out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ANKARA Turkey\u2019s foreign minister said in an interview published on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine were nearing agreement on \u201ccritical\u201d issues and he was hopeful for a ceasefire if the two sides did not backtrack from progress achieved so far. Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. President Vladimir Putin has called Russia\u2019s actions a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-250460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n