“I arrived in Ukraine after visiting Moscow,” the head of this world organization wrote on his Twitter account, adding: “We will continue to work to expand humanitarian aid and evacuate civilians from conflict zones.”
Guterres held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow this Tuesday; and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
At their meeting with Putin, he stated that his country does not oppose negotiations with Ukraine and hopes to reach peace agreements through diplomatic channels.
“Despite the fact that a special military operation is underway, we still hope to be able to reach agreements through diplomatic channels. We are negotiating, we will not give up,” Putin said at his meeting with the UN chief in the Kremlin.
He also estimated that talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, held March 29 in Istanbul, Turkey, managed to achieve a rather serious breakthrough.
“But, unfortunately, after reaching these agreements and our, in my opinion, proven intention to create favorable conditions for the continuation of negotiations, we were faced with a provocation in the city of Bucha, which the Russian army has nothing to do with it,” said he.
He reminded that Kiev’s position on a new agreement changed drastically after these events.
For his part, Guterres reiterated to Putin his earlier proposal to Lavrov to create a humanitarian contact group made up of the UN, Russia and Ukraine to organize humanitarian corridors.
“We are faced with a number of situations when Russia announces the creation of a corridor, Ukraine announces the creation of another corridor. The situation is that this is not being implemented in practice,” he said.
He explained that the intention of setting up this group is that the parties can discuss the situation together so that these corridors are really effective and no one has excuses to avoid setting them up.
He said the UN, together with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is ready to ensure the evacuation of civilians from the city of Mariupol in their chosen direction, both to Russia and to the Kyiv-controlled areas.
“It will be a longer process, we have to establish concrete forms of cooperation, but that interests us,” he added.
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