Two days after top world diplomats met for talks in Geneva, Russia's foreign ministry said it would offer strong assistance to Ukraine to overcome its crisis, according to the Associated Press.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said deputy minister Grigory Karasin met with Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Russia candidate in the Ukrainian presidential election that is to take place on May 25, the AP reported.
"The Russian side noted that the questions of resolving the internal political crisis should be decided by Ukrainians themselves in close cooperation with a special monitoring mission" of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said a statement summarizing the meeting, according to the AP. "Russia is prepared to show the most wide support in this."
There was no further information on what the support will include, the AP reported.
Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union issued a statement calling for an array of actions on Thursday including the disarming of militant groups and the freeing of public buildings taken over by insurgents, the AP reported.
Even with the talks underway, pro-Russian armed groups seized police stations and other government buildings in eastern Ukraine and said they wouldn't vacate unless the country's acting government resigned, according to the AP.
The pro-Russian protesters say Kiev officials are suppressing the country's Russian-speakers, mostly in eastern Ukraine, which was Yanukovych's support base, and has a substantial Russian-speaking population, the AP reported.
Russia has positioned troops in regions bordering Ukraine and many critics say Moscow is encouraging unrest in eastern Ukraine as a pretext for a military incursion, but Russia denies claims that it has agents in eastern Ukraine directing or encouraging the insurgents, according to the AP.
After Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea last month following a referendum that overwhelmingly approved Crimean secession, Washington and the EU imposed sanctions and warned there would be more if an agreement was not reached, the AP reported.
