DOHA, March 8, 2025 (BSS/TASS) - Doha made an effort to act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine to help resolve energy issues but it didn't work out, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar's prime minister and foreign minister, said.

"We saw that this conflict is too complicated. We tried to break it down to smaller mediation efforts," he noted in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson.

"And we were working on the children file, for example, Russian and Ukrainian children, bringing them back to their families. We were working on the energy file, but unfortunately, it didn't work out," the Qatari prime minister added.

The Washington Post reported in August 2024, citing sources, that Russia and Ukraine had planned to send delegations to Doha for indirect talks mediated by Qatar in order to discuss an agreement on halting attacks on energy facilities. However, the Ukrainian army's incursion into Russia's Kursk Region reportedly disrupted the negotiations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Rossiya-1 TV channel later that President Vladimir Putin had made it clear talks with Kiev were out of the question in light of the Kursk attack. On November 19, 2024, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in response to a TASS question about potential Russia-Ukraine talks on the security of energy sites that Doha's mediation efforts went beyond the return of children.