Conciliatory tones from Russia: Putin ready for negotiations with Ukraine
Created: 12/25/2022, 2:07 p.m
By: Daniel Dillman
Just in time for Christmas, Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to talk to all parties about "solutions" to the Ukraine war.
War on Christmas:
Russia continues shelling of Ukrainian cities over holiday
Signs of hope:
Russian President Vladimir Putin ready to negotiate
Editor's note:
Read the latest news and developments from the Ukraine conflict here.
Some of the information from the Ukraine war processed here comes from Russia or the Ukraine and thus from the warring parties themselves. This information can therefore not be independently verified.
Moscow - The fighting in the Ukraine war did not take a break at Christmas either.
Troops from shelled the Ukrainian city of Cherson on Sunday night (December 24, 2022).
Ukraine, in turn, reported that its own forces had managed to destroy several Russian combat vehicles.
But on Sunday morning Moscow struck a different note.
Russian President Vladimir Putin personally said in an interview with the state-controlled TV channel
Rossya 1
about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine: "We are ready to negotiate acceptable solutions with all parties involved, but that is up to them - we are not refusing negotiations, They are.” In the interview, Putin also stressed that the Russian army was “on the right track” with its deployment in Ukraine.
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Ukraine war: Putin sees no great danger in the conflict with the West
He again blamed the West.
The goal of a foreign alliance led by the United States is to tear Russia apart.
It was also the West that started the Ukraine conflict in the first place in 2014 - by driving the then pro-Russian President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, out of office during the Maidan protests in Kyiv.
President Vladimir Putin is in a Christmassy mood in Moscow and is also adopting a conciliatory tone when it comes to the Ukraine war.
© VALERIY SHARIFULIN/AFP
But in the interview, in which Putin addressed negotiations with Ukraine for the first time in a long time, the Russian president tried to downplay the conflict with the West.
This has not reached a dangerous level.
Putin again called the invasion of the troops he commanded a "military special operation".
The word “war”, which the President had used for the first time days earlier, was omitted again this time.
Negotiations in the Ukraine war: No results so far
Even after more than 300 days of war in Ukraine, there have been no serious negotiations on a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government in Kyiv has always emphasized that it will only consider negotiations once all Russian troops have left Ukrainian soil.
According to Selenskyj, these would not only include the areas conquered in the war that has been going on since February last year.
Russia would also have to withdraw from the Crimean Peninsula, annexed in 2014.
In the past few days, Moscow has again emphasized that it will be ready to negotiate once the goals of the military special operation have been achieved.
What these goals are remains the Kremlin's secret.
(Daniel Dillman)