Interfax: Russia open to talks with Ukraine provided fighting stops – top lawmaker

MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax) – The speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament said Russia is open to talks with the government to be formed in Ukraine after the recent presidential election but on the condition that military action is immediately ended in the southeast of the country.

“We will hold negotiations after the government and all the state institutions are formed in Ukraine. We can’t avoid this because dialogue is the only way to solve the problems that have built up and are building up in relations between Russia and Ukraine. But, of course, on the condition that an immediate end is put to the hostilities – it can’t be otherwise. You can’t hold negotiations with those authorities against the background of cannonades and the killings of civilians,” Federation Council Chairperson Valentina Matrivyenko said in a program on Federation Council television.

She said, however, that hopes that had been built in Russia on Ukraine’s presidential poll “have dissolved somehow.”

“Everyone hoped that the president would come along and immediately stop the hostilities against the population of the southeast and carry through a national dialogue with the participation of all the regions and all the political and public forces. But instead, he has practically given the go-ahead to escalation in Ukraine by saying that it must be a kind of blitzkrieg – ‘quick, effective mopping up of the territory,'” Matviyenko said.

“There are no separatist demands there, the people have raised normal human demands. They want more autonomy for the regions so that the regions can be in charge of their own their economic and social development and elect their own authorities and not those hated oligarchs that are being forced upon them,” she said.

“There are war crimes against civilians. And if the people who give such orders and those who carry them out think they’ll get away with this, they are wrong. Russia and many other countries are already writing a ‘white paper’ in which all these crimes will be recorded, and those who are responsible for them will be punished,” Matviyenko said.

Russia would also demand an international assessment of the current developments in southeastern Ukraine, she said. “That’s not even a case of double standards, it’s political cynicism, which is inexplicable,” Matviyenko said.