MOSCOW, June 11 (Reuters) – Ambassadors from France, Germany and Britain in Moscow met Russia\u2019s deputy foreign minister on Thursday to condemn the latest escalation \u200cin the war in Ukraine and reaffirm support for U.S.- and European-backed \u200ctalks between Kyiv and Moscow, France\u2019s foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n
The meeting followed talks in London last Sunday, where \u200bthe leaders of France, Germany and Britain \u2014 the so\u2011called E3 \u2014 met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and backed his call for a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Russia’s foreign ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin accused the three countries of pursuing a “destructive policy” on the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the Moscow \u200cmeeting, French foreign ministry spokesperson \u2060Pascal Confavreux said the ambassadors had used the talks to restate their concerns “to deplore the recent escalation by Russia and the intensification \u2060of its information manipulation campaigns in the context of its aggression against Ukraine.”<\/p>\n
Such meetings between Western diplomats and senior Russian officials have become rare since the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The Russian \u200bforeign ministry \u200bsaid Galuzin presented the diplomats with “an objective \u200bassessment of the destructive policy pursued \u200cby their countries’ leaderships” which it said was aimed at encouraging Kyiv to continue the war with Western backing.<\/p>\n
At Sunday’s meeting in Downing Street, the European leaders and Zelenskiy agreed that the current line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian forces should be the starting point for talks.<\/p>\n
They also backed legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine, \u200cincluding the possible deployment of a multinational force, \u200band said frozen Russian financial assets should remain immobilised \u200buntil Moscow compensates Kyiv for \u200bwar damages.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has stuck to his hardline stance \u200con the war, but suggested last week \u200bthat U.S. President Donald \u200bTrump’s proposals for peace could help end the fighting.<\/p>\n
Putin told foreign reporters in St Petersburg that he was willing to talk to European politicians but \u200bthat they were not the \u200cright people to broker an end to the war.<\/p>\n
(Additional reporeting by John \u200bIrish in Paris; Writing by Lucy Papachristou and John Irish; Editing by \u200bMark Trevelyan, William Maclean and Ros Russell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOSCOW, June 11 (Reuters) – Ambassadors from France, Germany and Britain in Moscow met Russia\u2019s deputy foreign minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1019928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[282135,2000,299,29137,36,1824,10546,2301,332,657,20729,335],"class_list":["post-1019927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-deputy-foreign-minister-mikhail-galuzin","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-foreign-minister","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-kyiv","tag-moscow","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116732013045953543","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1019928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}