A Kremlin adviser said Monday that “now is not the time” to negotiate with Ukraine in view of the offensive launched on August 6 by Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region of Kursk, but insisted that Moscow’s conditions for resolving the conflict “have not been cancelled.” Ukraine claims control of more than 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory.
“At the current stage, given this adventure, we will not talk,” Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic adviser Yuri Ushakov told Russian outlet Shot. “At the moment, engaging in a negotiation process would be completely inappropriate,” he stressed, noting that, in any case, the conditions demanded by Russia “are not cancelled.”
Ushakov was referring to the Russian leader’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, which include the withdrawal of Kiev’s forces from four regions illegally annexed by Moscow by September 2022. These demands, expressed last June, also include establishing Ukraine’s neutral status and renouncing plans to join NATO.
War in Russia
In August, commenting on the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk, which for the first time brought war, in a sustained and prolonged manner, to the territory of the country that started the conflict, Putin acknowledged that one of his objectives was to improve the country’s position in any possible negotiations with Moscow, but he assured that Russia did not see “anything to talk about” with kyiv at the moment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reiterated that peace will only be possible if the Russian military withdraws completely from Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. The Ukrainian leader says he wants to draw up a plan by November, which would serve as a basis for a future peace summit to which the Kremlin must be invited.
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