Our news desk has just issued this short item on Poreshenko's discouraging remarks in Minsk:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says there is "no good news" so far at the marathon Minsk peace talks aimed at ending the fighting in eastern Ukraine and that the Russian position at the summit is "unacceptable."
Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande have spent some 14 hours discussing ways to resolve deadly fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Poroshenko made his comments during a break in the talks, held at Belarus's presidential palace.
He said there are "conditions that I consider unacceptable," though he declined to give details, and added: "the [negotiation] process is ongoing" and "there is always hope."
Poroshenko said the situation is "difficult" but said that Merkel and Hollande are "helping us a lot."
More than 5,350 people have been killed since April in fighting between Ukrainian forces and Moscow-backed, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
(AFP, RIA, TASS, Reuters)
!!!BREAKING!!!
International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde says IMF and Ukraine have reached a preliminary deal on a new financial rescue plan worth $17.5 billion.
(AFP, Reuters)
There has been a bit of a social-media buzz about how Alyaksandr Lukashenka apparently tried to pull a chair out from under Vladimir Putin, just as he was about to sit down at the Minsk negotiations. It seems, however, that the footage was being played backwards:
This appears to be what really happened: