Kyiv denies statements about private meetings between Putin and Poroshenko
As Russian media reported earlier, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stated that the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, were in secret contact with each other. Kyiv, however, denies that such meetings took place.
Interfax cited Ukraine's presidential administration as saying the leaders of the two countries have not held bilateral meetings since the 2015 signing of the Minsk Agreements aimed at ending the war with the Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
According to subsequent Russian media reports, the Kremlin spokesman himself refuted such an interpretation of his statements. "No one has ever talked about any meetings... I said nothing in my interview about such meetings," the Russian media quotes Peskov as saying.
Putin and Poroshenko met in Berlin in the autumn of 2016 as part of a quadripartite summit on conflict resolution.