Istanbul: On March 29, Russia pledged to scale down military operations around Kyiv and northern Ukraine as a confidence-building step. This is the most tangible sign yet of progress towards negotiating an end to the war. “In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing (an) agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions,” Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin told reporters.
