Putin’s latest unrealistic peace offer rejected outright by kyiv

During a briefing to the leadership of the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday, June 14, President Vladimir Putin once again expressed his side of the story and made a new “offer” for peace under conditions even worse than Never.

The Financial Times reported comments from Oleksandr Lytvynenko, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, who said Putin’s comments were aimed at undermining the World Peace Summit due to open in Switzerland on Saturday and another “demonstration that he does not want to negotiate”. .”

Speaking on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said no ceasefire offer from Putin could be trusted and warned Russia would not stop its offensive, even if his demands were met.

The British news site was following reports of the meeting by Russian state news agency TASS, which failed to disguise the real irony of Putin’s comments.

He initially said the 2022 invasion was an inevitable response to kyiv’s aggression against the citizens of a part of Ukraine that “declared independence in accordance with international law.”

He continues: “In 2014, the people of Donbass could not stand it (the Kiev government). Militia units stood up, repelled the aggressors, and then pushed them back from Donetsk and Luhansk.”

According to him, all those (Western countries) who have helped the war machine of the kyiv regime in recent years are accomplices of the aggressors.

He said Russia was ready to negotiate with representatives of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, which he said was the country’s “only legitimate government body” – implying he was not ready to negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Putin then listed the conditions under which he was ready to begin negotiations with Ukraine to end the war, which he said was “another real peace proposal” to “really end the war.” and gradually, “step by step”, begin to restore “good neighborly relations” with Ukraine.

Echoing the phrase he and his acolytes have used in recent months, he said Ukraine and the international community must “recognize new territorial realities” and that any agreement “must be reached through agreements fundamental international standards. Naturally, this implies the cancellation of all Western sanctions against Russia.”

On Putin’s terms, Russia would gain full control of “Novorossiya”, the Catherine II-era name referring to the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions conquered by Russia.

He said there could be no territorial compromise with kyiv and now wanted Ukraine to cede all territories of the four regions “within the administrative borders that existed at the time of their entry into Ukraine”, and that any discussion on the subject was “closed forever”. .”

His next condition was that Ukraine agree to become a neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear state and that it demilitarize and accept “denazification” as part of the abortive 2022 Istanbul Accords. He declared that “well “It is understood that the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine must be fully guaranteed.”

He ended by saying that if kyiv and Western governments refused his conditions, then they would bear “political and moral responsibility for continued bloodshed.”

Needless to say, kyiv rejected his proposal out of hand, and probably as Putin expected.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the Ukrainian president’s office, wrote on X/Twitter: “There is no new thing here, no real peace proposal and no desire to end the war. But there is a desire not to pay for this war and to continue it in new forms. This is all a complete sham. Therefore, once again, get rid of illusions and stop taking seriously “Russia’s proposals” which run counter to common sense.

“Its content is quite specific, extremely offensive to international law and absolutely eloquently testifies to the inability of the current Russian leadership to correctly assess realities.”