Progress made in Ukraine talks – Moscow

Lavrov was attending a conference on Afghanistan, hosted by his Chinese colleague Wang Yi. The foreign ministers of Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were also present, along with observers from Indonesia and Qatar.

“I consider it significant progress that the Ukrainian negotiators confirmed the need to ensure a non-nuclear, non-aligned status of Ukraine and its security outside the framework of NATO, as well as the Ukrainian colleagues’ understanding that the issues of Crimea and the Donbass have been permanently resolved,” he told reporters in Tunxi.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko disagreed with Lavrov’s statement, however, saying the Russian diplomat “demonstrates a misunderstanding of the negotiation process.”

“The issues of Crimea and Donbas will be settled for good after Ukraine restores its sovereignty over them,” Nikolenko tweeted. “During the talks in Istanbul, the Ukrainian delegation presented its proposals on how to achieve this goal.” Monday’s peace talks in Istanbul saw Kiev commit for the first time in writing to several key points Russia insisted on for good-neighborly relations, namely foregoing NATO membership and nuclear weapons, according to chief Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, who himself was born in Ukraine.

While Kiev did not outrightly recognize the independence of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Crimea’s 2014 decision to rejoin Russia, Medinsky said that Kiev was willing to negotiate on those points. The Kremlin later said that Crimea’s status is not a subject of negotiations at all, explaining that it's an internal part of Russia.

All three regions seceded from Ukraine following the 2014 Western-backed Maidan in Kiev. Crimea voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia, while the Donetsk and Lugansk regions declared independence. Moscow recognized the Donbass republics, last month, citing Kiev’s refusal to implement the Minsk agreements brokered by France and Germany in 2014. The protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.