In late July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Russia is ready to resume full-fledged talks with Ukraine, but that Kiev is unwilling to initiate the negotiating process.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has stated that the West has forced Kiev to adopt a stance where negotiations with Moscow are impossible.
“We have paid attention to a recent decree by the Ukrainian president to approve the decision of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council on the 'impossibility' of negotiating with the Russian president,” Zakharova told reporters on Thursday.
She drew parallels with the Minsk peace agreements, saying that Kiev at first "pretended that it wants to clinch them, then that those accords were being concluded and implemented only to finally announce that it was not going to deal with them, misleading the international community.”
“Already at the time it was obvious that this was done at the behest of the West, which does not want a cessation of hostilities (in Ukraine) and intends to continue them,” Zakharova emphasized.
The statement comes after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov underscored late last month that Russia remains ready to negotiate with Ukraine.
“President [of Russia Vladimir Putin] said that Russia, of course, retains its willingness to negotiate. But as the situation changes, so do the conditions, and we have repeatedly spoken about this. But in general, the principle remains the same: all the goals of the special military operation (remain the same),” Peskov told reporters.
This followed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying in July that Moscow is ready to resume full-scale talks with Kiev and the ball is in Ukraine's court, but that so far its leadership has clearly shown its unwillingness to launch the process.
The top Russian diplomat earlier said that if the West hopes to resolve the situation in Ukraine militarily, peace negotiations are useless.
“If (the West) wants not negotiations, but the victory of Ukraine over Russia on the battlefield, then, probably, there is simply nothing to talk about with the West, since this approach does not allow Ukraine to move forwards towards the peace process,” Lavrov pointed out. He underlined that it was Ukraine that earlier abandoned the Moscow-Kiev negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously stated that he is not ready for talks with Moscow, and the Kremlin stressed there are no such prospects at the moment.
On February 24, Moscow launched a military operation in Ukraine after the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which - along with the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, have since become part of Russia, appealed for help in defending them from Kiev's attacks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the time that the goal of the special operation is “to protect people who have been subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.” He added that to implement the task, it’s necessary to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine and to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for "bloody crimes against civilians" in Donbass.
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