Lavrov: Nobody planned to negotiate ceasefire in Ukraine at meeting with Kuleba

ANTALYA. March 10 (Interfax) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there were no plans to negotiate a ceasefire at his meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday.

In commenting on Kuleba's remark that the two ministers did not manage to reach an agreement on a ceasefire, Lavrov said, "Nobody actually planned to negotiate a ceasefire. All these proposals and the sequence of steps set out in these proposals are well known to the Ukrainian side."

"If the goal of the meeting was to ask these questions, let's stop firing and let's arrange humanitarian corridors not the way Russia has proposed but the way the Ukrainian side wants this, and if all of this is being done just to tell journalists later that all their good intentions failed, then perhaps this fits the logic of Ukrainian policy and diplomacy of which I've spoken: outward effects are designed for the public's momentary perception and substitute real work," Lavrov said.