Russia Response to offer of talks: Kremlin insists on war aims
Russia has received Kiev's signaled willingness to talk about peace with scepticism and wants to continue to fully enforce its war aims. "Whether through the special military operation or through negotiations - we have no alternative to achieving our goals. And we will achieve them in any case," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Negotiations were of course preferable, but talks were made more difficult by the fact that Volodymyr Zelenskyi had no legitimacy as President of Ukraine, he claimed once again. He saw Kiev's attempts to promote a diplomatic solution via Beijing as an emergency situation for Ukraine.
24.07.2024, 21:11
SDA
Russian President Vladimir Putin had named Ukraine's renunciation of NATO membership and several territories in the east and south-east of the country as war aims. Moscow is demanding the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya and is also sticking to its demand for the "denazification of Ukraine", which in the Kremlin probably means the establishment of a government in Kiev that is dependent on Russia.
Kiev, in turn, had demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. However, the latest initiatives by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba indicate that the Ukrainians may be willing to compromise. During his trip to China, Kuleba attempted to coordinate his own peace plan with the diplomatic solution to the conflict offered by Beijing. He had mentioned direct talks with Moscow as a goal.
So far, the details of the offer are unclear to him, said Peskov. However, it was obvious that the Ukrainian leadership was in trouble. "Sooner or later - perhaps not as quickly as we had hoped - the number of people trying to take a sober look at what is happening will increase."
