Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov says U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has not called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to "reach out to Ukraine," and this topic was allegedly not discussed at all.
"Mr. Pompeo didn't call on President Putin to do this [to reach out to Ukraine's new government]. Maybe he somehow did this indirectly, but the topic of Ukraine was not discussed at the meeting with the president yesterday," he told journalists, as reported by an UNIAN correspondent in Russia on May 15.
At the same time, Peskov stressed that such appeals could be commented in such a way: "Russia has never been a supporter and initiator of the bilateral relations destruction."
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"Our president always speaks of the preservation of the special nature of relations between the peoples of the two countries. This approach is well known. We know that there is a very serious Ukraine's internal problem in the south-east of the country," he said.
At the same time, he called Russia "the guarantor of the Minsk agreements," which must be implemented by Ukraine.
"We expect that there will be some new elements in Ukraine's approach that will bring us closer to the implementation of the Minsk agreements," he added.
As UNIAN reported earlier, after talks with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Sochi on May 14, Pompeo said,
"I urged Russia to reach out to Ukraine's new president [Volodymyr Zelensky] to demonstrate leadership by taking step towards breaking the stalemate."
