No progress on Ukraine truce or peace talks: Russian FM

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that no progress was reached on establishing a ceasefire or starting peace negotiations over Ukraine during crisis talks in Berlin with his counterpart from Kiev. ‘One place where we cannot report positive results is in, first and foremost, establishing a ceasefire and (starting) a political process,’ Lavrov told a Berlin press conference that was carried live by Russian state television. Five hours of talks late Sunday that also involved the foreign ministers of Germany and France concluded with an agreement for the sides to meet again and continue trying to deescalate the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War. Lavrov accused Kiev's new pro-European leaders of continually changing demands over what it would take to establish a truce in more than four months of fighting with pro-Kremlin insurgents that has claimed more than 2,000 lives. Lavrov said he used the Berlin meeting to ‘reaffirm the Russian position, which is that a ceasefire... must be unconditional. ‘Our Ukrainian counterparts, unfortunately, continue setting conditions -- and rather vague ones at that -- including, as they say, the establishment of an impenetrable border,’ Lavrov noted, according to AFP.