MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Barack Obama agreed during a phone call on Friday the current standoff in Ukraine was not in the interest of their countries, the Kremlin said.
"The presidents agreed that the current situation is not in the interests of either country," said a Kremlin statement.
Meanwhile in his first comments on sanctions after the US and EU earlier this week slapped the toughest punitive measures on Russia since the Cold War, Putin characterised them as "counterproductive, causing serious damage to bilateral cooperation and international stability overall."
However, the Kremlin said the two presidents agreed on the urgent need for an "immediate and stable halt to fighting in southeast Ukraine and the start of a political process."
They also agreed that tripartite contact group talks bringing together Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which is monitoring the situation in Ukraine should continue.
Tripartite talks held on Thursday and Friday in the Belarussian capital Minsk reached agreement on freeing 20 prisoners from each side, according to Ukraine's representative cited by Russian news agencies.
Russia's annexation of Crimea and a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine that Washington accuses Moscow of supporting has led to the severest crisis in relations between Russia and the West in decades.
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