Putin considered communication with Poroshenko on the Kerch incident participation in his election campaign

Russian President Vladimir Putin explained the abandonment of telephone negotiations with the President of Ukraine Peter Poroshenko with an unwillingness to participate in his election campaign. “The point is not that I just evade and I don’t want to talk with Peter Alekseevich, that’s the point. The fact is that I do not want to take part in his election campaign,” Interfax quotes.

Putin added that Poroshenko specifically creates crisis and provocative situations, after which "wants to immediately demonstrate that he successfully solves the problems that have arisen." Putin emphasized that he did not want and would not take part in this "simple combination", although he did not refuse contacts with Poroshenko.

Earlier, Petro Poroshenko reported that immediately after the incident in the Kerch Strait, he requested a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, but did not receive an answer . After that, the President of Ukraine was forced to turn to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, so that in a conversation with Putin it would discuss the immediate liberation of detained Ukrainian troops.

Assistant President of Russia Yuri Ushakov then confirmed that Kyiv was asking a telephone conversation, but he did not take place. Ushakov did not name the specific reason for this, but noted that in the preparation of such calls, many factors are evaluated, including the compatibility of graphs and the purpose of the conversation.

A few days later, Poroshenko said that he was ready to talk with the President of Russia in any format : bilateral, in Norman, with the participation of American partners or anyone, but the Russian side avoids a direct conversation. This time, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that in the near future Putin’s telephone conversation with Poroshenko is not planned.

Answering the question of the need to meet two leaders in the Norman format, Peskov recalled that this format is dealing with Minsk agreements, and noticed that the "provocation of the Ukrainian side" in Russian territorial waters is unlikely to be changes in the Minsk agreements.

On November 25, Russian border guards detained three Ukrainian warships in the Sea of ​​Azov, claiming that they crossed the border illegally, without preliminary warning. However, the Ukrainian authorities say that they reported in advance about the planned movement of ships from the port of Odessa to Mariupol. In total, there were 24 citizens of Ukraine on the ships, now they are arrested.

Putin first commented on the incident in the Kerch Strait a few days after the incident, on November 28, speaking at the Investorum "Russia Calls!". The Russian president called the incident a provocation of the Kyiv authorities on the eve of the presidential election in Ukraine. "There was an incident on the Black Sea. This is such a border incident, nothing more," Putin said.

However, Petro Poroshenko, for his part, announced the threat of a full -scale war with the Russian Federation and called the incident “Extraordinary event for the first time in 4.5 years of Russian aggression” on November 25. In some regions of Ukraine on November 28 , martial law was introduced for 30 days. At the time of martial law, Russian men aged 16 to 60 years are prohibited. These measures were introduced in order to "prevent the Russians in Ukraine from carrying out the operations that they planned back in 2014," Poroshenko explained.