Moscow, Kyiv (Al-Ittihad, agencies)
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that he is ready to hold negotiations with Kiev on the basis of the talks held in the spring of 2022, if Ukraine requests it, while Moscow has ruled out any discussion against the backdrop of the Ukrainian attack on the Kursk region.
In August, Ukraine launched an unprecedented offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several towns.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused,” Putin said during a dialogue session at an economic forum in Vladivostok, eastern Russia.
He added: “If Ukraine shows a desire to negotiate, we will not refuse,” stressing at the same time that these talks “will not take place based on some passing demands, but must be based on the documents that were agreed upon and signed in Istanbul in the spring of 2022.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly announced that Russia and Ukraine are close to reaching an agreement in the spring of 2022, shortly after the war began.
The Russian president said: “We were able to reach an agreement, this is the goal, and this is evidenced by the fact that the head of the Ukrainian delegation signed this document, which means that the Ukrainian side was generally satisfied with the agreements reached.”
“The agreement did not enter into force only because an order was issued not to do so, because the elites in the United States and Europe, some European countries, wanted to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” he added.
Putin said his country would consider other options if Ukraine did not extend the deal to ship Russian gas to Europe.
Speaking about the natural gas transit agreement with Ukraine, which expires at the end of this year, Putin said that “if Ukraine does not extend the contract, shipments to Europe will decrease, but this is their own decision.”
The Russian President also said that the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region failed to achieve its goals, considering that it “helped accelerate the advance of the Russian army in the Donbass region.”
Putin added that “the Ukrainian army’s operation in the Kursk region was intended to push the Russian army to move its forces from one region to another to hinder its advance in the Donbas region,” noting that this did not happen.
He continued: “The opposite of their goal is what happened, as the enemy’s operation weakened its forces in the main combat area, and our forces accelerated their advance there by hundreds of kilometers.”
He pointed out that Russian forces began to expel Ukrainian forces from Kursk, and succeeded in advancing towards the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
#Putin #ready #negotiate #Ukraine
