London, (Samajweekly) Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has played down any hopes of a breakthrough in the talks held with Ukraine in Turkey, BBC reported.
On Tuesday, Russia said it intended to scale back its military activity in Kiev and Chernihiv, while Ukraine said it would consider becoming a “neutral” state.
“What is positive is that the Ukrainian side has at least started to specifically formulate and put on paper what it is proposing. Until now we had not managed to achieve that,” Peskov said.
“As regards the rest, we cannot, put it this way, at present state there have been any breakthroughs, anything very promising,” he said, in remarks reported by the Interfax news agency.
Peskov said Russia is careful to comment on the talks as “we believe that negotiations should take place in silence”, adding that the chief Russian negotiator will speak later.
He said that Crimea, the region annexed by Russia in 2014, is “part of Russia” and the Russian constitution precluded discussing the fate of any Russian region with anyone else.
The status of Crimea is settled for Russia, and Moscow will not discuss the issue with Ukraine or any other party, Peskov told journalists on Wednesday.
“Crimea is part of the Russian Federation. According to our constitution, we cannot discuss with anyone the fates of Russian territories, the fates of Russian regions. That is out of the question,” the official said, RT reported.
