Almost three months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, there appears to be no hope that a negotiated solution will be reached anytime soon. On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said that the warring sides are not currently holding peace talks “in any form.”
“No, negotiations are not going on. Ukraine has practically withdrawn from the negotiation process,” Rudenko said, according to Interfax.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Vladimir Medinsky, who headed the Russian delegation in earlier negotiations with Ukraine, said Kyiv hasn’t responded to a draft peace deal Russia put forward on April 15. A Ukrainian negotiator responded to Medinsky’s comments by saying Russia was operating with “fakes and lies.”
The Times report says that the impasse stems from Russia’s desire to control “vast swathes” of Ukrainian territory, although the contents of the April 15 peace proposal are not clear. Russia had earlier asked for Ukraine to drop its claim to Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and recognize the independence of the breakaway Donbas republics.
While Ukraine has been slowly losing territory to Russia in the east, Kyiv has hardened its stance at the negotiating table thanks to massive military support from the US and other Western nations. “Now that we feel more confident in the fight, our position in the negotiations is also getting tougher,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said last week.
On Sunday, NATO pledged to give Ukraine military support for as long as it needed, and the US is preparing a massive $40 billion aid package for Ukraine. Once it is signed into law by President Biden, the new aid package would bring total US aid for Ukraine in 2022 alone to over $53 billion.
Leaders of NATO countries have been actively discouraging Ukraine from holding peace talks with Russia. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that he “urged” Ukraine not to negotiate with the Russians. He reportedly told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an April 9 visit to Kyiv that even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, the West was not.
The US and many of its NATO allies have also made clear that one of their main goals in Ukraine is to hurt Russia. According to the Times, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has said the West needs to push for a military defeat of Russia rather than “a peace that allows aggression to pay off.”
In recent weeks, the leaders of France, Germany, and Italy have all come out in favor of a negotiated solution to end the war, but Washington does not appear to be on board with the idea. When asked about the US’s position on negotiations, Biden administration officials have said they feel the best way they could help Ukraine is by supporting them militarily.
Medinsky said that Ukrainian negotiators had agreed to much of the draft deal Russia proposed but said other factions of the Ukrainian government were likely against the agreement. “But they probably represent that part of the Ukrainian elite that is most interested in reaching a peace agreement,” he said. “There is probably another part of the elite that doesn’t want peace, and that draws direct financial and political benefit from a continuation of the war.”
While a peace deal seems unlikely in the near future, Russian and Ukrainian officials have been holding talks at a lower level, but they have focused on issues like prisoner exchanges. Medinsky insists that Russia still wants to reach a deal with Ukraine and is seeking an “Austria” model, a country that is not part of NATO but is a member of the EU.
Talks begin when both sides reach exhaustion. Right now both sides are hoping for a win.
Meanwhile their combined Sudoku skills are off the chart!
The “ukranian” (US) delegation was a joke, at best. It consisted of Kiev regime Nazi thugs and those who wasn’t that to the required extent were tortured and shot dead. Apparently war queen Vicky Nudelman and her tribal underlings who runs this war and ancient hatred of anything Russian fuels it, had absolutely no problem with that.
While “negotiating” they occasionally left the room one after the other for consultation with the Pentagram, and came back parroting whatever they were told to say.
Thanks to this, Kherson oblast is now forever Russian as Donbass eventually and the rest of the south south east. Russia will most likely be happy to let the Poles have the backward Nazi part around Lvov and since Poles and ukie Nazi’s hate eachother viciously since the ukie Nazi mass killings of Poles in WW2, Poland will have a h*ll trying to subdue those. The Kiev part will again vote for closer relations with Russia and no US attempt to coup or color revolution that with Nazi terrorists will ever succeed.
“British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that he “urged” Ukraine not to negotiate with the Russians. He reportedly told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an April 9 visit to Kyiv that even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, the West was not.”
I’m sorry, when did Russia invade any ‘Western’ country? I’ve been under the impression this whole time that the Ukraine has been the object of Russia’s military, and that they’ve been very careful to not attack anything outside of the Ukraine’s borders. So how does ‘The West’ even get a seat at any negotiations table, much less assume the authority to tell the Ukraine whether or not it can negotiate and/or surrender?
Then again, it must be quite a slap in the face to ‘brave, independent Ukraine’ to be very publicly reminded it can’t negotiate or surrender without a thumbs-up from its Western paymasters. Zelensky better wake up, and quickly, and realize that if he sides with The West/US/NATO this is the kind of treatment he and his country are in for, for a very long time. He might be better off- and serve the Ukraine better- by taking the route of a ‘surrender with honor’ and siding with Russia.
Precisely.
In other words, it’s patently obvious that the influx of instruments of death to ZelBoy is prolonging the war to indefinite proportions.
NEGOTIATIONS, not WMD’s!
It’s my impression that the RF and it’s allied Ukrainians (DPR, LPR, Crimea) are in constant communication – after all they are Allies fighting alongside each other to end this 8 year civil war.
I really don’t understand the article’s title – does it mean that the Allies are not communicating with the Kiev Regime ?
Nope. It means the Allies (West, led by the U.S. of A.) are using their stick to tell Kiev what to do.
NATO or the war party is washington plus the vassals
the Allies are (RF, DPR. LPR ) and much of the blank areas on this map by the Chinese MFA. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d0c3aa121d2733d03ebcc1f5bace6339823190544fd31fd58d1b63cb9fdabba.jpg
Kiev has ignored the demands for 8 years.
Why would Zelensky want peace? He is a murdering criminal who cares nothing for his people.
Mass murdering criminal. 10 murdered by a mentally insane man in Buffalo, NY gets huge media response, but kill 10’s or hundreds of thousands Iraqis, Afghans, Yemanese, Syrians, Libyans and others and we get the cricket treatment from the corporate media.
Yes that also. The same criminals globalists who are running the world support Zelensky!
We need to discuss “US to Block Russian Debt Payments to Americans” story. This is same sceme used against Venezuela. Not allowing their goverment to pay debt obligations in an attempt to weaken and overthrow the Government. It is basically government theft by administration against American individuals.. War is immoral, as its state-sponsered murder. War is a degeneration. Lets stop lying to ourselves.
Its worse than you think in Ukraine. Its Nazism.
I had to Google the title to find the NYT article you cite. It conjured up 2 simultaneous thoughts. 1. As Doom Sternz has also commented, it smacks of Nazism when a leader demands that businesses in his own country must serve the will of the State before they serve their own shareholders. 2. As he has done with almost all of his sanctions, Biden has shot himself in the foot. The policy of refusing payments weakens our own economy and virtually guarantees that harmed individuals will work to remove him in 2024. Is he really so stupid that he thinks they will blame Putin? Or is he using his office to strike fear into American businessmen?
The likelihood of a peace deal is about the same as the likelihood of the JCPOA deal being finalized, i.e., zero.
I don’t understand why is talking to avoid people dying to is a controversial position these days. Our government is truly mad.
From Zelensky’s point of view, he must choose between allowing the ethnic Russians Ukraine has persecuted for the last 8 years to keep the land they occupy vs. continuing to fight until his last soldier is either dead or captured.
If he actually believes he can defeat Russia, this might be a complicated choice to make. But could any reasonable person seriously believe that he can defeat Russia? If he keeps this up another month, there won’t be anybody to receive the billions of dollars in weapons we propose to send.
I’m astonished that he saw the light in Mariupol. I really thought he would let every man, woman, and child in the steel plant die of starvation and thirst. So, there may be hope for him yet.
He did not “see the light”. As soon as the first few soldiers went outside and spoke to Russians about surrender, the word quickly reached the bosses in Azovstal and in Kiev, who quickly took credit for the decision and claimed they wanted their “boys” alive to fight again.