The assessment given by Andriy Sybiha, the deputy head of the presidential office, is the most direct expression of Ukraine’s willingness to negotiate with Russia since the negotiations broke off in April last year.
Jani Parkkari,
Petri Burtsoff
Kiev is ready to discuss the future of the Crimean peninsula with Moscow, if the Ukrainian troops manage to advance all the way to the coast, i.e. the border of the Crimean peninsula, according to a close adviser of the Ukrainian president For the Financial Times newspaper (you will switch to another service).
Deputy Director of the Presidential Office Andriy Sybihan is the most direct expression of Ukraine’s willingness to negotiate with Russia since negotiations broke off in April last year.
– If we succeed in our strategic goal on the battlefield and have an administrative border with the Crimean peninsula, then we are ready to start a diplomatic discussion about the situation, Sybiha said, referring to the counterattack planned by Kiev.
– This does not mean that we have ruled out the liberation of Crimea by armed forces, he added in an interview with the Financial Times.
The majority of Ukrainians are against it
The newspaper estimates that Sybia’s statement is capable of convincing Western countries that support Ukraine that Ukraine is willing to negotiate on the status of Crimea instead of going to war.
Until now, the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi has refused to negotiate until Russian troops withdraw from all of Ukraine. Zelenskyi did not comment on Sybiha’s claims.
According to Sybiha, the situation in Crimea is now under discussion because Ukraine is preparing a counterattack to recapture the territories from Russian forces.
According to FT, at the beginning of the war, Ukraine was ready to negotiate with Russia about the status of Crimea, but since then the negotiations between the two countries have mainly focused on the exchange of prisoners.
Opinion polls conducted by the Kyiv Institute of International Sociology show that 87 percent of Ukrainians oppose handing over any occupied territory to Russia.
Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula in February 2014 and illegally annexed it a month later.
Experts believe that Ukraine’s counter-offensive will be concentrated in the south in the vicinity of Crimea, with the aim of cutting the land bridge between Crimea and Russian-occupied territories.
Putin has said that the status of Crimea is such that it cannot be negotiated. According to FT, several Western countries fear that Russia will resort to the use of nuclear weapons to defend Crimea.