“There is no way out” Why is Ukraine unwilling to negotiate peace with Russia? | United News Network

February 2022RussiaInvasionUkraineA few weeks later, delegations from Moscow and Kiev met in Belarus to conduct secret peace negotiations, but within an hour, Ukraine’s chief negotiator lost hope.

Agence France-Presse reported that Russia sent a notorious former culture minister to participate in the negotiations. He was not only involved in a doctoral thesis plagiarism scandal, but also a inflammatory nationalist who recently faced sexual harassment accusations.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, advisor to the Ukrainian Presidential Office, said in a recent interview with AFP in Kyiv: “At that time, about 45 minutes into the first round of negotiations, the intellectual level of these people was revealed… They did not understand that this This war is a real war.”

“These people are not ready to negotiate at all. In Russia, they are just technocrats with almost no influence. They come, they read out an ultimatum, and that’s it!”

Nearly two years after the first round of talks ended inconclusively, there are now more calls for Ukrainian officials to return to the negotiating table and negotiate with the Kremlin to end the war through diplomatic means.

Although Ukraine has many weapons provided by Western countries, the results of recent counterattacks have been disappointing. As concerns grow over Western commitments to support Ukraine and disruptions in arms deliveries, there are also growing calls for Kyiv to return to the negotiating table.

But for Ukraine, peace talks are not on the cards. Officials pointed out that almost all the agreements that Kiev joined after the collapse of the Soviet Union were destroyed by Moscow. Sitting down and negotiating with Russia is not only meaningless, but may also bring danger.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba recently stated that the Russian PresidentPutin(Vladimir Putin) is a habitual liar. “He promised international leaders not to attack Ukraine just days before launching the invasion in February 2022.”

Kuleba pointed out that Russia agreed to recognize and respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in the 1994, 1997, 2014 and 2015 agreements, but Moscow has blatantly ignored these agreements.

In October last year, days after Russia annexed parts of Ukraine, the president of UkraineZelenskiy(Volodymyr Zelenskyy) signed a decree that there would be no negotiations with Moscow as long as Putin was in power.

On the other hand, the Kremlin has repeatedly declared that it is ready to sit down and negotiate with Ukraine. Putin told G20 leaders this month that Russia had never refused to enter into peace talks with Ukraine, but Ukraine had publicly stated that it wanted to withdraw from the negotiations.

However, Nigel Gould Davies, the former British ambassador to Belarus, pointed out that Putin’s words cannot be fully believed.

Entering negotiations would help Russia buy time to regroup its troops for a follow-up attack, he told AFP. Since Russia will hold a general election in March next year, Putin’s remarks can be seen as an attempt to appease the Russian people who are looking forward to an early end to the war.

“Putin has nothing to lose by pretending to want peace,” Gould-Davies said.

Andrei Kozyrev, the former Russian Foreign Minister who now lives in the United States, bluntly said that Putin may take the opportunity to pretend to compromise just to start a war in the future.He believes that the endRusso-Ukrainian WarThe only way is to provide Ukraine with the most powerful weapons as soon as possible to resist the invaders.