Pentagon Chief Austin: Putin has no right to impose peace conditions on Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin has no right to dictate peace terms to Kyiv, said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. This is how he commented on the Russian leader’s proposal on the conditions for completing a special military operation (SVO) and starting negotiations on Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, in turn, called Putin’s statement an ultimatum message that is no different from previous ones.
The head of the Pentagon called on Putin to end the conflict with Ukraine today
Austin notedthat Putin is not in a position to dictate terms to Kyiv to achieve peace. “This is not the world we want to live in. And so I think that he is not in a position to dictate to Ukraine what it should do to achieve peace,” the US Secretary of Defense told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels, reports TASS.
We don’t want to see the leader of one country wake up one day and decide that he wants to erase the border and annex the territory of his neighbor
According to him, the Russian president could end the war today if he decided to do so. “And we call on him to do so and leave the sovereign territory of Ukraine,” Austin concluded.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in turn, refused to consider Putin’s plan peaceful. “This proposal does not indicate good will, it indicates Russia’s desire to achieve military goals (…) That is, this is not a peace proposal, but a proposal that implies an even greater occupation,” he said.
Ukraine rejected the Russian President’s proposal
The Ukrainian authorities also rejected Putin’s proposal to achieve peace. Thus, Zelensky called the words of the Russian leader an ultimatum.
These statements are an ultimatum. There is nothing else in them except ultimatums that have existed before
In his opinion, if Putin’s conditions are met, Russia will not stop its offensive on Ukrainian territory.
Advisor to the head of the Office of the President (OP) of Ukraine, Mikhail Podolyak, said that there is nothing new in the words of the Russian leader, “there is no real peace proposal.” He explained that the non-aligned status envisaged by the Russian peace initiative would leave Ukraine defenseless, and acceptance of the proposed conditions would force Kyiv to renounce its sovereignty and subjectivity.
Putin invited Kyiv to withdraw troops from new regions of Russia
At a meeting with the leadership of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Putin said that Kyiv should withdraw troops of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from four new regions: Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics. In addition, he should abandon the idea of joining NATO. In this case, according to Putin, Moscow will be ready to cease fire in the Northern Military District zone.
As soon as they declare in Kyiv that they are ready for such a decision and begin the real withdrawal of troops from these regions, and also officially notify about the abandonment of plans to join NATO, our side will immediately, literally at the same minute, follow the order to cease fire and begin negotiation
Also, the fundamental position of the negotiations is the neutral and nuclear-free status of Kyiv. In this case, we will not be talking about freezing the conflict, but about its final completion, the president explained.
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