Nazarbayev meets with Poroshenko in Minsk

    President Nursultan Nazarbayev has met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk, according to a message from the Kazakh presidential website.
    The leaders of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus were set to meet with Poroshenko and EU officials today for talks.
    Poroshenko’s press release stated the meeting was to address a number of political and economic issues, including Ukraine’s integration into the European Union and the stabilization of the situation in the troubled east part of the country.
    Poroshenko’s deputy chief of staff, Valeriy Chaly, said the meeting is an opportunity to peacefully resolve the Ukrainian crisis, suggesting the summit could help the participants begin to develop a real road map to ending the war.
    Earlier, President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the topics to be discussed during the meeting in Minsk might include the crisis in Ukraine, humanitarian aid to the country’s eastern regions, the flow of refugees to Russia, and the possibility of an internal dialogue between Kyiv and eastern Ukraine.
    Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who will also be attending the Minsk talks, said she would stress the importance of the Ukrainian government maintaining good relations with both EU member states and Russia.
    German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed doubt about the meeting being fruitful concerning Russia-Ukraine relations, but recognized the importance of the meeting, nonetheless, according to Akipress.