On the evening of 3 March the second round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine came to a close, following the first on 28 February. Here is how it went. At the first meeting on 28 February Russia and Ukraine reached no agreements. On 3 March the second round of negotiations took place: here is how it went.
3 March was the day of the second round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, after what had seemed, amid delays and postponements, like the diplomatic efforts of the two countries to try to resolve the conflict through dialogue had already foundered. On 28 February the first meeting had taken place in the Belarusian city of Gomel, during which Ukraine had called for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Moscow's troops from its territory. Russia, for its part, wanted recognition of Crimea and Ukraine's military neutrality. The most that had been achieved, however, was a second round of dialogue.
On the afternoon of 3 March the same delegations from the first meeting gathered in Brest, Belarus. And beyond the creation of humanitarian corridors, a date was set for a third round of negotiations the following week.
On Monday 28 February reports circulated of a possible meeting between the delegations of the two countries at war, Russia and Ukraine. After four days of bombardment by Moscow and fighting on the ground, with the number of Ukrainian refugees already reaching six figures and the death toll rising vertiginously, even the mere possibility that the two countries could meet at a table was seen as a glimmer of light amid the darkness of the conflict.
The reins of organising the meeting were taken by Belarus, and this posed a problem from the outset. President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Vladimir Putin; Belarus itself is one of the fronts from which the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February was launched, and soldiers from Minsk are reportedly already fighting alongside those from Moscow on the ground. It was difficult for Kyiv to accept handing the Belarusians the keys to the peace negotiations, but in the end it was agreed, if only to try to resolve an increasingly dramatic situation.
The meeting was set for the afternoon at the Rumyantsev-Paskevich Residence in Gomel, a small town a few tens of kilometres from both the Ukrainian and the Russian border. The Russian and Ukrainian representatives sat on opposite sides of a long table, facing each other directly. Journalists on the ground captured the scene on camera, then were asked to leave the room. While the world held its breath in the hope that something good might emerge from the gathering, the seniority of the representatives was already an indication that the crisis would certainly not be resolved that day. Neither Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky nor Russian president Vladimir Putin attended the meeting. Kyiv at least sent its foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, and its defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov. Moscow did not even do that.
"If the talks are about peace, it will be welcome. But we will not surrender, we will not capitulate, we will not cede a single centimetre of our territory," Kuleba had declared before sitting down at the table. Kyiv called for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Moscow's troops from the territory, while Russia demanded recognition of Crimea and Ukraine's military neutrality, meaning severing all ties with Nato and the European Union. While the delegations discussed these issues amid pauses and reports of the talks ending that were systematically denied, Russia continued to bomb Ukraine, above all the eastern city of Kharkiv, also struck by a battery of cluster bombs (banned under the Ottawa Convention). Meanwhile, from Kyiv the Ukrainian president announced the signing of the application for membership of the European Union, with the photograph of the document going around the world.
As darkness fell the delegations concluded the meeting and withdrew to their respective capitals for consultations. The bad news was that no agreement had come out of that room, even though in the meantime French president Emmanuel Macron announced that he had obtained, in a lengthy phone call with Vladimir Putin, assurances that Moscow would stop striking civilian targets (a pledge that was never honoured, even in the hours that followed). The good news, however, was that a date was set for a second round of talks.
The new meeting was supposed to take place 24 hours after the first, on 1 March. It was then postponed, and there were fears that this was a sign of its collapse, all the more so after 2 March passed without the delegations meeting, despite having announced they would. And in the end, representatives of Russia and Ukraine came together on 3 March in the Brest area of Belarus.
The delegations began the talks with a handshake. When publishing the photograph of the delegates seated at the table, Mikhailo Podoliak, adviser to Ukrainian president Zelensky, stressed that the objectives on the agenda were three: an immediate ceasefire, an armistice and humanitarian corridors.
Journalists were not permitted to attend the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, at which neither Vladimir Putin nor Volodymyr Zelensky was present. But both held press conferences running concurrently with the meeting, which significantly dampened expectations of a positive outcome. Zelensky called on Putin for a direct meeting, "the only way to stop a war." The Russian president, for his part, reiterated what he had said on the day of the invasion: that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and that he has no intention of turning back. And after a phone call with the Moscow leader, French president Emmanuel Macron said that "Putin wants control of all of Ukraine and the worst is yet to come."
In the evening the meeting between the two delegations came to a close. The good news to emerge from the negotiations is that Russia and Ukraine will cooperate on the creation of so-called humanitarian corridors — passages along which non-governmental organisations can move safely to transport food and medical supplies, gather information on the situation in the field and evacuate civilians — and on a temporary ceasefire to make them possible. In addition, the two countries agreed on a new meeting, a third round of negotiations likely to be held at the beginning of next week, which has kept the diplomatic channel open as much as possible. From Kyiv they report that at the meeting "the results we hoped for were not achieved", while the Russian delegation spoke of "major steps forward".
