Poroshenko: Talks with Putin to ‘decide fate of Europe’
August 26, 2014, 8:21 pm

Putin, left, and Poroshenko, right, have not had face-to-face talks since they met at a World War II commemoration ceremony in France last June [AP]

The two leaders were brought together by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko; senior EU officials presided over the talks.

At the outset, Putin said the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which the UN says has already killed at least 2,000 people, would not be resolved through military escalation.

“We’re ready to discuss ideas to end the conflict,” Putin said.

“We are convinced, cannot be solved through further escalation of the military scenario, without account for the vital interests of the country’s southeastern regions, without peace dialogue with their representatives,” Putin said in a report carried by the ITAR-Tass news agency.

But he reiterated that Moscow would retaliate if an EU-Ukraine trade pact harmed Russian markets.

For his part Poroshenko said that he “sincerely hoped that today’s meeting and it won’t be the last and there will be many will lead to an end to the conflict.

Poroshenko called for stringent controls along the Russia-Ukraine border to end arms smuggling to pro-Russian separatists.

He said this would bring a quick end to the conflict.

Poroshenko added that the talks would decide “the fate of Europe and the world”.

But the meeting between the two leaders was overshadowed by Ukraine’s claim that it had captured 10 Russian paratroopers it says were on a mission inside Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine’s TV aired footage of an interrogation of some of the soldiers who admitted they were Russian troops.

Moscow first said the soldiers were pro-Russian rebels from eastern Ukraine.

But after the footage was aired, Russian news agency Ria Novosti quoted a defense official as saying that the “soldiers really did participate in a patrol of a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border, crossed it by accident on an unmarked section, and as far as we understand showed no resistance to the armed forces of Ukraine when they were detained”.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian tanks were reported on the move in the east of the country as rebels in the besieged city of Donetsk accused Kiev of “indiscriminate shelling” which is killing and wounding dozens of civilians.

Source: Agencies