The Kremlin said Sunday that talks between Kyiv and Moscow would continue Monday by videoconference, in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine, at a time when diplomatic contacts are increasing despite the fighting.
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Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted by the state-run TASS news agency, denied talks were underway on Sunday, saying they would resume on March 14.
Earlier in the day, a Russian negotiator had estimated that the talks were progressing.
“If we compare the position of the two delegations between the start of the negotiations and now, then we see significant progress,” said Leonid Slutsky, an MP who was part of the Russian delegation who recently met with Ukrainian negotiators in Belarus.
“My personal expectation is that this progress will lead very soon to a common position between the two delegations and to documents to be signed,” he added, quoted by Russian news agencies.
Since the start of Moscow’s military offensive on February 24, three rounds of talks have taken place in Belarus. They were mainly focused on creating humanitarian corridors for civilians.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Ukrainian Dmytro Kouleba left discussions in Turkey without announcing tangible progress, but pledged to continue their dialogue.
On Sunday, Mykhailo Podoliak, one of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisers, tweeted that Moscow had stopped issuing “ultimatums” to Kyiv and started to “listen carefully to our proposals”.
Mr. Zelensky had estimated on Saturday that Moscow had adopted a “fundamentally different” approach in these negotiations, his counterpart Vladimir Putin told him on Friday that he had seen “positive progress”.