The Ukrainian president said he was ready to negotiate directly with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. However, he demanded that two other participants take part in any discussions.
Will negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will they resume? While the exchanges and positions of the two belligerents have hardly evolved since the first months of the conflict, which started in February 2022, there seems to be movement again. Tuesday, February 4, the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to negotiate directly with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, “if it is the only configuration in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and no longer lose people “, in an interview with the British presenter Piers Morgan and broadcast on YouTube.
A declaration fraught with meaning and which reflects the evolution of the conflict, unfavorable to Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky has always refused to exchange directly with the Kremlin master, in October 2022 he even signed a decree excluding all negotiations as long as Vladimir Putin remains in power. The Ukrainian president would therefore be ready to return to this provision to obtain peace. But these negotiations would not be without conditions and the Ukrainian leader posed one during his interview: that two other participants, in addition to Ukraine and Russia, sit at the negotiation table. He did not specify who would be the parties to “this meeting with four participants”, but a few minutes earlier the presenter Piers Morgan had mentioned possible exchanges between the two countries who left for the conflict, the United States and the European Union .
A casting that makes sense since the United States and the European Union support kyiv against the Russian offensive since the start of the war in Ukraine. kyiv’s relationship with the two Western Bloc forces also stirs up the anger of Moscow. While the country has registered the “realization of the strategic objective of a full -fledged membership of Ukraine to the European Union (EU) and to the Organization of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) in its Constitution in 2019 – and formulated his request for membership in the EU four days after the Russian invasion -, Vladimir Putin opposes this idea wishing to keep the country under Russian influence. NATO members, including those of the EU and the United States, to attack them if they came to the requests of Ukraine.
The two powers, American and European, are actually indirectly invested in the conflict. But Donald Trump’s return to the White House was able to influence kyiv and Moscow to look at negotiations again. The Republican threatened to reduce American aid to Ukraine and promised to end the war quickly, without however specifying how.
What does Russia think?
Volodymyr Zelensky’s declarations arrived to Moscow, but were obviously not taken seriously. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov judged these words “meaningless” this Wednesday, February 5. He considered that “being ready must be based on something” and recalled the Ukrainian decree theoretically impossible for direct negotiations. “Despite everything, we remain open to negotiations,” continued Dmitri Peskov, adding that “reality on the ground” should convince kyiv to “show openness and interest in such negotiations”. If Russia says he is open to the discussion, at the end of January, Vladimir Putin firmly rejected the idea of dealing directly with his Ukrainian counterpart which he deems “illegitimate”: “I will choose people who will lead these negotiations,” he had Added.
Still, despite the speeches, no concrete element on the organization of new negotiations has been advanced. The two belligerent countries not having revised their claims of a single comma, finding an understanding point would prove to be complex. Volodymyr Zelensky sticks to His peace plan drawn up in 2022while Vladimir Putin demands the renunciation of Ukraine to join NATO and to keep the Ukrainian territories it has annexed. Unthinkable thing for kyiv.