By Ece Toksabay
ANKARA (Reuters) – Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova and her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Lubinets met in the Turkish capital on Wednesday for talks expected to focus on humanitarian assistance.
Photos showed them sitting on opposite sides of a coffee table at an Ankara hotel on the sidelines of an international ombudsman conference. There were no immediate details on the talks which lasted for some 40 minutes.
As they met, the battle for Soledar raged in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, with Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group claiming to have taken control of the salt mining town as its fighters poured fire on a pocket of resistance in the centre.
Earlier, Moskalkova said on the Telegram messaging app the two discussed providing humanitarian assistance to citizens of the two countries. The talks had also been expected to include the possibility of further exchanges of prisoners of war.
They were later expected to visit the Turkish presidential palace, where President Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to make a speech for the conference at 1130 GMT.
A Turkish source said Moskalkova and Lubinets were expected to possibly discuss a humanitarian corridor and the situation of children who fled the war. Issues such as the Black Sea grains corridor or a potential prisoner swap would be discussed at higher levels, the source said.
Russia and Ukraine have conducted numerous prisoner swaps – most recently on Sunday – in the course of the war, which is now in its 11th month.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Mert Ozkan in Ankara, Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Chris Reese, Jonathan Spicer and Tomasz Janowski)
