UKRAINE | Putin says summit positive as talks begin

Petro Poroshenko

Russian President Vladimir Putin said talks with his Ukrainian counterpart on ending separatist fighting that’s killed more than 2,000 people were “positive” as the parties began discussions on a political resolution.
“Russia, for its part, will do everything for this peace process,” Putin said early today after meeting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at a summit in Minsk. “In our opinion, it should start as soon as possible.”
Poroshenko said on Twitter after the talks that Russia backed a Ukrainian peace strategy to stem fighting between the army and pro-Russian insurgents in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. While Putin didn’t mention the proposal, Poroshenko told reporters a “road map” would be drawn up and a three-way contact group involving the European Union would work toward a truce.
The Ukrainian leader arrived in the Belarus capital pledging to seek a peaceful resolution to five months of unrest that’s sparked the worst standoff between Russia and its former Cold War foes in two decades and unleashed sanctions on both sides. Ukraine blames its neighbor for stoking the insurgency with manpower and weapons, an allegation Russia denies.
“Any dialogue is a good thing, and they’ve agreed to additional meetings,” Yevgeny Minchenko, head of the Moscow-based International Institute for Political Expertise, said by phone. “However, it’s difficult to imagine any deal could be made in the current environment.”
Ukraine’s military said yesterday that its forces killed 225 rebels and destroyed three tanks over the past 24 hours. There was no independent confirmation. Government troops are fighting to maintain control of Ilovaysk, east of Donetsk, and two other towns, the military press service said on Facebook.
Thirteen government soldiers were killed and 36 wounded in the past day, a military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said at a briefing in Kiev. Bloomberg

Ilya Arkhipov, Kateryna Choursina
and Jake Rudnitsky