MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - Russia's human rights commissioner said on Friday evening that Russia had been too late joining in international efforts to help settle the conflict in Ukraine.
"European Union officials have tried to be useful in their own way. They started negotiations. It was only later on that we joined those negotiations, which wasn't quite correct. We should have tried to agree on the format for the negotiations right from the outset," Vladimir Lukin told Interfax after returning from Kyiv on Friday evening.
"On the whole, the negotiations haven't been finished, but they haven't been useless," he said.
Lukin had spent nearly 24 hours in Ukraine taking part in talks that brought together Ukrainian government and opposition leaders and EU officials and resulted in a deal to end violence that claimed numerous lives.