Russian authoritiessaid Monday that Moscow is prepared to work out a peace handle Ukraine however insisted that acknowledgment of its claims over 5 Ukrainian regions, including the Crimean peninsula, was imperative to ending the war.
The Russian side has repeatedly signified its readiness to start negotiations with Ukraine with no preconditions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state media.
These efforts continue, which is all I can state about this concern.
Peskov firmly insisted that Kyiv must carry out efforts toward resuming peace negotiations with Moscow, adding that they [in Ukraine] have a legal restriction on settlements, referring toZelenskys 2022 decree that rules direct talks with Russia impossible as long as Vladimir Putin remains president.Since launching its full-scale intrusion in February 2022, Russia has seized big parts of 4 Ukrainian regions and claimed them as its own, in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
Ukraine has knocked the annexations as an unlawful land grab and states it will never recognize them.
European officials have cautioned that accepting Moscows demands would set a harmful precedent for future aggression.In an interview with the Brazilian paper O Globo published on Monday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that international acknowledgment of Russias ownership of occupied Ukrainian areas and annexed Crimea was necessary to peace talks with Ukraine.
We stay available to negotiations.
However the ball is not in our court.
Far, Kiev has not shown its capability to work out, Lavrov informed the newspaper.U.S.
President Donald Trump stated previously that he believes Zelensky is prepared to yield Crimea in a ceasefire deal with Moscow, as talks on a truce entered what Washington called a critical week.But in the O Globo interview, Lavrov stated that, in addition to territorial claims, Moscow is still pursuing its initial war goals of demilitarizing and denazifing Ukraine, which he cast as being ruled by a neo-Nazi routine under Zelensky.
On the program are the jobs of demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine, lifting sanctions, lawsuits and arrest warrants, along with returning Russian possessions that are frozen in the West, the foreign minister said.Lavrov added that Moscow would also look for reliable guarantees of the security of the Russian Federation against the risks positioned by the hostile activities of NATO, the European Union and its specific member states on our western borders.
AFP contributed reporting.