Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokeswoman Yulia Mendel meanwhile, claimed April 12 that Kiev sent a request to Moscow more than two weeks ago for a phone discussion between Zelensky and Putin, but that Moscow has not replied. “After March 26, when four Ukrainian servicemen were killed at the front, the Office of President Volodymyr Zelensky made a request to the Office of Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold talks with him. We were hoping for a telephone conversation, but we have not yet received a response. We hope that it is not a sign that Moscow is abandoning the dialogue,” Mendel reportedly said. As previously reported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had not seen such a request for talks “in recent days” and did not know that it came recently.
With respect to the Donbas region, Donetsk People’s Republic (D.P.R.) accused Kiev of sabotaging talks of the security subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group yesterday. “The meeting of the working group on security issues is over. Participants failed to reach consensus concerning the modality of the coordination mechanism’s work because of the destructive position of the Ukrainian side,” the mission of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic to the Joint Ceasefire Control and Coordination Center reported on its Telegram channel yesterday, reported TASS. This apparently followed the claim by the Kiev side that the recent killing of two civilians, including a child, by Ukrainian shelling was fake news.