For weeks, the Kremlin “has been trying to get Ukraine to engage in negotiations to freeze the conflict while preserving the situation in the occupied Ukrainian territories,” Mikhaïlo Podoliak said in the sixth month of the Moscow-initiated war.
Russia “sends its proposals through various intermediaries”, he added without naming names, while according to kyiv there are currently no political contacts with Russia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in early August before visiting Ukraine for the first time in six months on Friday, has already repeatedly announced his willingness to play mediator between Kiev and Moscow.
Ukraine actually believes that Moscow “does not want a serious peace dialogue”, but Mr. According to Podoliak, it seeks to gain “an operational break for its military” before launching “a new offensive” against its neighbors.
Kyiv, for its part, rejects any negotiated settlement for territories under Russian occupation that it wants back, as well as those in the east and Crimea controlled by pro-Russian separatists annexed in 2014.
“All other scenarios (…) indicate only a dangerous operational pause before a new round of war”, Mr. Podoliak said, while promising that “Ukrainians will resist until they take it.”
“This is an existential war, and we have no other solution. Giving up the fight will mean not only the destruction of the Ukrainian state, but also the destruction of all its citizens,” he stressed.
Initial negotiations between Kiev and Moscow in the first weeks of the war bore no fruit.
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