Putin will not negotiate peace with kyiv as long as the US and NATO do not recognize the annexed territories

Ukrainian soldiers attack Russian positions in the Donetsk region. / REUTERS

The Kremlin is willing to talk but affirms that the conditions raised by Biden, such as the prior withdrawal of the Russian Army from all the areas it occupies in Ukraine, “are unacceptable”.

With the war in Ukraine as the main issue of discussion and the ways to stop it and reach a peace agreement, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded this Friday to his US counterpart, Joe Biden, and did so by speaking on the phone with Foreign Minister German, Olaf Scholz, who urged him once again to withdraw his troops from the neighboring country to enable a diplomatic solution. But the Kremlin responded by increasing its order: “President Putin has always been open to negotiations, but they have been complicated by Washington’s refusal to recognize Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territories.”

It so happens that, in the company of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Biden said the day before that he has no plans to meet with Putin to move towards a negotiated solution in Ukraine because for that he would have to “withdraw his troops from the country that has invaded». Scholz asked the same of the top Russian leader and also reproached him for the missile attacks against civilian infrastructure that are leaving Ukrainians without electricity and heating.

“Comprehensive political and financial support for Ukraine is leading to the fact that kyiv completely rejects the idea of ​​any negotiations. In addition, this encourages radical Ukrainian nationalists to commit more and more bloody crimes against the civilian population,” Putin snapped at the German chancellor, according to the website of the Russian Presidency. But Scholz was undeterred, saying that “Germany will continue to guarantee Ukraine’s defensive capability.” His Russian interlocutor lamented Berlin’s “destructive” policy and asked her to reconsider his position.

Moreover, Putin explained to the German chancellor that “the Russian armed forces avoided attacking certain targets in Ukraine with high-precision missiles for a long time, but such measures became necessary and unavoidable in the face of provocative attacks from kyiv.” According to his words, quoted by the Kremlin’s press department, kyiv bombed the Crimean bridge and “Russian energy facilities”, so, according to Moscow, Russia has the right to also attack Ukrainian energy infrastructures. The operator DTEK reported yesterday that Russian missiles have destroyed “40% of the Ukrainian energy system.”

Before Scholz’s phone call, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov had said that Putin “is willing to negotiate on Ukraine”, but the conditions raised by Biden, that is, the prior withdrawal of the Russian Army from all the areas it occupies In Ukraine, in his opinion, “they are unacceptable, they complicate the dialogue.” For this reason, Peskov continued, “the military operation in Ukraine will continue.”

On September 30, in a solemn ceremony held in the Kremlin, Russia annexed the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. And it did so, not on the borders controlled by its troops, but on the administrative ones that were established in Soviet times and that kyiv still retains to a significant extent. The Russian Army is now fighting precisely to occupy, at least, these four regions completely, as it did with Crimea in March 2014, while the Ukrainians fight to expel the invader.

dangerous twist

And it is that the annexation of the last four Ukrainian provinces constitutes, according to the US and its NATO allies, another dangerous turn of the screw by Putin, not only to Ukraine as a State, but to the world order established after World War II. The Russian president relied on the results of referendums held in September in Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, recognized by no one except himself and pro-Russian rebels.

Russia then warned Ukraine that continuing its counteroffensives to recover the regions seized by force and occupied by the Russian Army will be considered a direct attack against its “sovereignty”, with which, according to Putin’s warning on September 21, when he decreed the “partial mobilization”, your country will respond devastatingly. “When territorial integrity is threatened, Russia uses all means at its disposal, including nuclear weapons. It is not a bluff », he warned then.

What Moscow currently deplores most is Western military aid to Ukraine, which, together with the fierce resistance of the Ukrainian Army, has bogged down Russian troops with little progress for months, having lost the Kharkiv region, having to surrender Kherson, giving up ground in Luhansk and with the threat of a kyiv counter-offensive to recapture the city of Melitopol, in the Zaporizhia region.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov intimidatingly warned yesterday that there is an “enormous” risk that the war in Ukraine will escalate into a full-scale nuclear conflict. The Russian minister urged the nuclear powers to “avoid any military confrontation even with conventional weapons”, since, according to his calculations, “the escalation could become uncontrollable” and lead to the use of atomic weapons.

On Tuesday, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in the framework of a meeting with NATO colleagues in Bucharest that “it is increasingly difficult for Ukraine and Russia to agree on a solution to the conflict through dialogue.” In his opinion, “as the loss of human life increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to find a negotiated solution.” Although unsuccessful so far, Turkey has been spearheading mediation efforts to get kyiv and Moscow to negotiate. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly proposed a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who first rejected Moscow and now kyiv as well, putting the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian soil as a precondition.