Those who argue that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia for peace are “uninformed or misguided” or, even worse, pro-Moscow: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on social networks. Twenty-one months after the start of the Russian invasion, the front line seems static but according to Kuleba «Those who argue that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia are now uninformed or misguided, or they side with Russia and want Putin to be able to take a break before an even bigger attack.” Kiev, he recalled, “has had hundreds of talks with Moscow since 2014,” when Russian-backed separatists took control of areas of eastern Ukraine and Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula.
The talks, mediated by Germany and France at the time, also culminated in a bilateral summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris in 2019, but failed to achieve a lasting peace. Above all, Kuleba notes, they did not prevent Putin “from launching a brutal all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.” Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in the early stages of the war, but Zelensky ended the talks after the discovery of atrocities in the city of Bukha and other cities near Kiev in the spring of 2022. Last week, the Ukrainian leader said that the war-torn country is “not ready for talks with Russia” unless it withdraws from Ukraine and Putin leaves power. Yesterday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield” and that dialogue becomes “extremely necessary”.
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