Ukraine being cooperative at talks, but nationalists impeding exit via humanitarian corridors - Slutsky

MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax) - The head of the Duma foreign affairs committee and a member of the Russian delegation at the talks with Ukraine, Leonid Slutsky, said that despite Ukraine's having demonstrated its ability to negotiate, the decision on humanitarian corridors is still not fully working because of armed Ukrainian nationalists.

"At the last, second, round of talks, the Ukrainian side precisely demonstrated its ability to cooperate. They understand that this is about people's lives and this is our shared priority," Slutsky said on Rossiya-24 television channel.

At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities had handed out more than 400,000 weapons, the weapons got into the hands of nationalists - Ukraine's territorial defense fighters, who were now preventing peaceful residents from using the humanitarian corridors in Mariupol and Volnovakha, Slutsky said.

Nevertheless, whoever wants to may pass through these corridors, he said. "The humanitarian corridors are working, and whatever the situation might be next, certainly all people who wish to exit (...), all those who want to walk through them - you definitely will," Slutsky said.