Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview broadcast on Monday that there were times during the early talks of the Russian invasion when he felt the urge to deliver a "punch to the face" of his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. Kuleba's comments came during an informal hour-long interview with a Ukrainian blogger that covered topics ranging from cooking to hobbies and Ukrainian football.
When asked about the hardest aspect of the negotiations, Kuleba said, "The toughest conversations were those where you simply felt like you wanted to go up to your opponent and punch them in the nose but you really can’t do that." He added, "I can say that it happened two or three times, one of which was with Lavrov at a (resort) in Antalya, Turkey in the spring of 2022."
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held several rounds of talks in the early weeks of the invasion in February 2022. The negotiations initially took place near the Ukrainian border with Belarus and then in Turkey. Kuleba noted that the talks in Turkey were challenging and focused on a ceasefire and establishing humanitarian corridors. However, the two sides did not reach an agreement in those discussions, and no negotiations have taken place since then.
