Berlin welcomes Kuleba proposal for Ukraine peace conference

Created: 12/29/2022 5:03 am

By: Sandra Kathe, Caspar Felix Hoffmann, Niklas Kirk, Daniel Dillmann

Ukraine plans a peace summit with the UN without Russia.

For the Kremlin it is clear: "Peace plan must recognize new realities." The news ticker.

• Willingness to talk in the Kremlin:

  Russian President Vladimir Putin ready to negotiate with Ukraine

• Summit in Moscow:

  Russia calls for an informal summit in the Ukraine war

• 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.

+++ 2:45 p.m .:

In principle, the federal government welcomed the proposal by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba for an international peace conference for his country, which was attacked by Russia.

Apparently she sees little chance for this for the time being.

"Basically, every suggestion to bring the Russian war of aggression to an end is good and right," said Foreign Office spokesman Christofer Burger in Berlin at the federal press conference. 

Of course, it is up to the government of Ukraine to decide on the taking place, timing and content of possible negotiations with the Russian Federation.

However, it should be noted that “Russia is not showing any signs of abandoning its original war aims”.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just made it very clear that Russia "continues to work hard towards the destruction of Ukraine's statehood," said Burger.

"Russia has never shied away": Putin hints at negotiations in the Ukraine war

+++ 1:15 p.m .:

From the Kremlin’s point of view, a possible peace plan for Ukraine must recognize Russia’s annexation of the four areas in the east and south of the country.

"There can be no peace plan for Ukraine that does not take into account today's realities on Russian territory," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Russian news

.

"So far there is no peace plan at all," emphasized Peskow.

Moscow had recently repeatedly stated that it was ready for negotiations.

However, Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russia of not taking the offer seriously.

Russia refuses to withdraw troops.

Pictures of the Ukraine war: great horror and small moments of happiness

View photo gallery

Negotiations in the Ukraine war?

Putin is ready for talks

+++ 10.50 a.m .:

Almost ten months after the start of the war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that he was willing to negotiate.

"All armed conflicts end in negotiations, and Russia has never backed down, unlike Ukraine," he told a news conference in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday (December 28).

In addition, the Ukrainian leadership has excluded itself from talks.

"The sooner Kyiv realizes that talks are necessary, the better." Putin also described the war in Ukraine as a necessity to protect the interests of the Russian population living there.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg on December 27.

© Alexei Danichev/Imaga

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Ukraine war: Kyiv accuses Orban of disrespect and political short-sightedness

+++ Update from Wednesday, December 28, 6:55 a.m .:

The Ukrainian leadership criticized Hungary's Prime Minister Orban for his attitude in the Ukraine war.

"The remarks made by Hungary's prime minister demonstrate a pathological disdain for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people who oppose Russian aggression, and political short-sightedness," Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said on its website on Tuesday (December 27).

The trigger was a statement by Orban that the war could be ended if the US stopped providing arms to Kyiv.

Ukraine war: US organization describes Putin's willingness to negotiate as a bluff for the West

+++ 5.30 p.m .:

According to an assessment by the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s willingness to talk should be understood less as an offer of peace than as a bluff to the West.

This was reported by the online medium

on Tuesday.

According to experts at the US organization, Putin's apparent concession was primarily aimed at influencing Ukraine's western partners.

The Kremlin ruler's goal could be for Western partners to persuade Ukraine to make concessions soon.

ISW experts described Putin's statement on Sunday (December 25) about Russia's willingness to talk as a "targeted information campaign" aimed more at potential talks with the West than at an agreement with Ukraine.

They continue to perceive Russia as a plaything for the West.

Basis for negotiations in the Ukraine war: Lavrov destroys hopes for peace in the near future

+++ 11.45 a.m .:

Could there soon be peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in the Ukraine war?

After all, Vladimir Putin has declared his readiness for talks.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has now unequivocally announced that Ukraine must meet Moscow's demands.

Otherwise the Russian military will do so.

Lavrov reiterated well-known demands such as recognition of the occupied territories, "demilitarization" and "denazification" of the rest of Ukraine, and security guarantees.

"The thing is quite simple: fulfill them for your own good," Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian news agency

.

"Otherwise the matter will be decided by the Russian army."

Update from Tuesday, December 27, 9:25 a.m .:

The United Nations has received a proposal from Ukraine for an international peace summit with reluctance.

"As the Secretary-General has said many times in the past, he can only mediate if all parties want him to mediate," said UN spokeswoman Florencia Soto Nino-Martinez, referring to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba's move.

Negotiations on the Ukraine war: Kyiv announces an upcoming peace summit

++ 9.40 p.m .:

At the end of February, representatives of Ukraine are to meet with United Nations officials and their Secretary General António Guterres for a peace summit.

According to the online newspaper

, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced this on Monday (December 26) and stressed that the United Nations, as an independent party, was an ideal partner for a peace summit.

However, Kuleba ruled out Russia's participation unless the country had previously accounted for itself before a war crimes tribunal.

The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had already announced possible peace talks in December.

Ukraine will probably take positions similar to those in a peace paper presented in November, in which the country called for the withdrawal of Russian troops by the end of 2022, an end to ecocide, the release of all prisoners of war and recognition of the country's sovereignty.

The Kremlin said that Ukraine would have to accept "new realities" and thus the annexation of the regions in the east of the country in order to be able to negotiate.

Russia says it is ready to negotiate – Ukraine instead requests Russian expulsion from the UN

+++ 4.15 p.m .:

After the announcement to apply for the exclusion of Russia from the United Nations, the Ukrainian government has put its plan into action.

The rationale for the request was set out in a public statement.

Specifically, according to a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine "is calling for the Russian Federation to be stripped of its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and expelled from the United Nations as a whole".

The initiative is justified by the fact that Russia's admission in 1991 would not have taken place on the basis of the applicable rules of the UN Charter and Russia would only have occupied the former seat of the Soviet Union in the UN Security Council illegally.

According to an assessment by the German Press Agency, however, the application has little chance of success: As a permanent member, Russia, alongside the USA, Great Britain, France and China, is a member of the most powerful body in the UN, the Security Council, and thus has the right to veto it can block important decisions.

Putin ready for negotiations with Ukraine - Germans do not believe in a quick end to the war

Update from Monday, December 26, 7:52 a.m .:

A large majority of people in Germany do not believe that the war in Ukraine will end soon.

This is the result of a survey by YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency, which the

reported on in the morning.

57 percent of respondents believe that the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine will last at least until the end of 2023.

Only 27 percent expect it to end later this year.

19 percent do not provide any information.

Update, 3:35 p.m .:

In a video speech, President Volodymyr Zelenskyj addressed the people of Ukraine.

He wished people a Merry Christmas.

Referring to the ongoing attacks from Russia, Zelenskyy said: "We will not wait for a miracle.

We will do one thing ourselves.” The Ukrainian President did not respond to Vladimir Putin's indirect offers of talks.

Negotiations in the Ukraine war?

Putin seems ready

First report from December 25th, 2022:

Moscow – The combat operations 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

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.

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.

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 Zelenskyy, 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.

(Red/Agencies)