President Vladimir Putin mentioned Russia would instantly impose a cease-fire in Ukraine and launch negotiations if Kyiv withdraws its army from 4 areas Moscow took over in 2022 and provides up plans to hitch NATO.
Putin’s remarks got here as Switzerland ready to host scores of world leaders – however not from Moscow – this weekend to attempt to map out the primary steps towards peace in Ukraine.
They additionally coincided with a gathering of leaders of the Group of Seven main industrialized nations in Italy and after the U.S. and Ukraine this week additionally signed a 10-year safety settlement that Russian officers, together with Putin, denounced as “null and void.”
Putin blasted the Switzerland convention as “simply one other ploy to divert everybody’s consideration, reverse the trigger and impact of the Ukrainian disaster (and) set the dialogue on the incorrect observe.”
His proposal got here in a speech on the Russian Foreign Ministry and was geared toward what he known as a “final resolution” of the conflict rather than “freezing it,” and careworn the Kremlin is “prepared to start out negotiations directly.”
Broader calls for for peace that Putin listed included Ukraine’s recognition of Crimea as a part of Russia, retaining the nation’s non-nuclear standing, limiting its army power and defending the pursuits of the Russian-speaking inhabitants. All of those ought to turn into a part of “basic worldwide agreements,” and all Western sanctions towards Russia must be lifted, Putin mentioned.
“We’re urging to show this tragic web page of historical past and to start restoring, step-by-step, the unity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe usually,” he mentioned.
Putin’s remarks, made to a bunch of somber Foreign Ministry officers and a few senior lawmakers, represented a uncommon event by which he clearly laid out his situations for ending the conflict in Ukraine, however it didn’t embrace any new calls for. The Kremlin has mentioned earlier than that Kyiv ought to acknowledge its territorial features and drop its bid to hitch NATO.
But Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry known as Putin’s plan “manipulative,” “absurd” and designed to “mislead the worldwide group, undermine diplomatic efforts geared toward reaching a simply peace, and cut up the unity of the world majority across the objectives and ideas of the U.N. Charter.”
Besides looking for to hitch NATO, Ukraine needs Russian forces out of its territory, together with the Crimean Peninsula that was illegally annexed in 2014; the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity; and that Russia be held accountable for conflict crimes and for Moscow to pay reparations to Kyiv.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After Ukrainian forces thwarted a Russian drive to the capital, a lot of the preventing has targeted within the south and east – and Russia illegally annexed areas within the east and the south, though it doesn’t absolutely management any of them.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, mentioned on social media that there was nothing new in Putin’s proposal and that the Russian chief “voiced solely the ‘standard aggressor’s set,’ which has been heard many occasions already.”
“There is not any novelty on this, no actual peace proposals and no need to finish the conflict. But there’s a need to not pay for this conflict and to proceed it in new codecs. It’s all an entire sham,” Podolyak wrote on X.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mentioned at NATO headquarters in Brussels that Putin “has illegally occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory. He isn’t in any place to dictate to Ukraine what they have to do to deliver a few peace.”
Austin added that Putin “began this conflict with no provocation. He may finish it immediately if he selected to do this.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg added that “this isn’t a peace proposal. This is a proposal of extra aggression, extra occupation, and it demonstrates in a manner that Russia’s purpose is to regulate Ukraine.”
Putin insisted that Kyiv ought to withdraw from all 4 annexed areas solely and basically cede them to Moscow inside their administrative borders. In Zaporizhzhia within the southeast, Russia nonetheless doesn’t management the area’s administrative capital with a pre-war inhabitants of about 700,000; within the neighboring Kherson area, Moscow withdrew from its greatest metropolis and capital of the identical identify in November 2022.
Putin mentioned if “Kyiv and Western capitals” reject his offer, “it’s their business, their political and ethical accountability for persevering with the bloodshed.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly aired its readiness for peace talks with Kyiv and blamed the West for undermining its efforts to finish the battle.
Putin went additional Friday and claimed his troops by no means meant to storm Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, despite the fact that they approached town.
“In essence, it was nothing aside from an operation to power the Ukrainian regime to peace. The troops have been there to push the Ukrainian facet to barter, to attempt to discover an appropriate answer,” he mentioned.
Moscow withdrew from Kyiv in March 2022 and described it as a goodwill gesture as peace talks between the 2 started, however the pullback befell amid fierce Ukrainian resistance that considerably slowed down Russia’s battlefield advances.
Putin additionally claimed that in that very same month, he informed a overseas official he wasn’t ruling out withdrawing forces from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas and ceding occupied components of them again to Ukraine, so long as Kyiv allowed Russia to have a “robust land connection” to Crimea.
He mentioned the official deliberate on bringing that proposal to Kyiv – which Moscow “welcomed,” as it generally welcomed “makes an attempt to discover a peaceable decision of the battle.” But the Kremlin then annexed each areas, together with the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, citing the outcomes of sham “referendums” it staged there. Putin mentioned those and said, “The matter is closed perpetually and is not up for dialogue.”
In Friday’s preventing, Russian defenses shot down 87 Ukrainian drones, the Defense Ministry in Moscow mentioned, most of them launched towards the Rostov area, residence to Russia’s southern army command, however no deaths or harm have been reported in one of many greatest Ukrainian drone barrages of the conflict.
In Russia’s Belgorod area on the border, a part of a residential constructing collapsed within the city of Shebekino after Ukrainian shelling, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov mentioned. Three individuals have been injured, he mentioned.
Ukraine’s army has been on the again foot in current months, with its troops outnumbered by the Kremlin’s forces and working wanting ammunition and weaponry resulting from delays in promised Western army assist.
Russia has battered Ukraine with drones, particularly its energy grid. It fired 14 missiles and 17 Shahed drones in a single day, Ukraine’s air power mentioned. Air protection programs downed all of the drones in addition to seven missiles, it mentioned.
The assaults injured six individuals within the Donetsk area, the place residential buildings have been hit, officers mentioned.
A Russian drone struck a bus close to the village of Esman within the northern Sumy area, injuring three girls. Authorities say 20 passengers have been on the bus on the time.
Also Friday, Russia returned the our bodies of 254 Ukrainian troopers to Ukraine, Kyiv mentioned. Once recognized, the our bodies might be returned to relations, in response to Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
Source: www.dailysabah.com