Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday in statements to the Russian public television journalist Rossiya-1, Pável Zarubin, that his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenski, lacks legitimacy by not having undergone elections after expiring his current mandate. To the point … That, for that reason, with him he does not plan to sign any peace agreement, despite ensuring that he is open to such possibility.
“You can negotiate with whoever-in Ukraine-, but due to his lack of legitimacy he (Zelenski) has no right to sign anything,” Putin warned. In his words, «if we start conversations now, they will be illegitimate. There is a problem here: when the current head of the regime- in Ukraine- signed the decree prohibiting negotiating with Russia, was a legitimate president, but not now, so he cannot cancel the decree ».
In the opinion of the Kremlin chief, the one who could annul the decree, according to the Ukrainian Constitution, would be the president of the Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament. «If there were will, it would be possible to solve any legal issue. But for now we simply do not see such desire, ”added the top Russian leader, who for his part claimed to be willing to” select “the group of Russian negotiators and allow Zelenski to participate in the conversations, but not to subscribe anything.
Putin believes that Ukrainian legislation forces to comply with electoral deadlines, even in war. He also referred to attempts to stop the conflict shortly, in March 2022, noting that “our negotiations began immediately after the start of the special military operation. At first we told the then Ukrainian leaders: the people of the Popular Republic of Lugansk and the People’s Republic of Donetsk do not want to be part of Ukraine. Get out of there and that’s it, everything would end without military and war actions ».
However, Putin continued, “we received kyiv signs that they would fight to the last Ukrainian (…) West convinced Ukraine to continue war.” “But they would not have lasted much without money and ammunition-envied by the West-, everything would have ended in a month and a half or two months, in this sense Ukrainian sovereignty is almost nil,” he said. The Russian president also said that the withdrawal of the troops in the kyiv surroundings, in March 2022, “was made at the request of some European leaders (…) who denounced that Ukraine cannot sign a peace treaty with a gun pointing to the head ». He regretted that, after ordering the exit of his troops from the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital, “we were once again deceived.”
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