Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke by phone on Friday to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and accepted a request from him to work more closely with the U.N. to address humanitarian issues in Ukraine, Russian news agencies said.
They said Shoigu had reiterated Russia's argument that it was obliged to carry out a "special military operation" in Ukraine because the government in Kyiv had been conducting "genocide" against people in the southeast of the country and the West had been pumping weapons into Ukraine.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Alex Richardson)
