19 August 2014
The Russian government isn’t willing to acknowledge facts demonstrating its delivery of heavy armaments and fighters to terrorist groups in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said on Aug. 18, as reported by the Interfax-Ukrayina news agency.
“These were complicated discussions on all issues,” he said of the Aug. 17 trilateral talks in Berlin involvement diplomats from Russia, Ukraine and the EU. “As I understand it, Russia isn’t ready to assume the full requirements for protecting OSCE representatives and isn’t ready to recognize the facts of constant crossing of the border by mercenaries, hardware and facts of shooting from Russian territory.”
Zenon Zawada: It’s developments such as this – the lack of Russian acknowledgement of obvious facts – that leads us to believe a military resolution to the conflict is more likely than a political compromise, at this point in time. The Russian government is even using something as basic as acknowlegdement of the truth as a negotiating card, which makes finding any common ground a challenge.