Russia will not concede to US preconditions for negotiations although it prefers the diplomatic path towards resolving the crisis in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Commenting on President Biden’s comment on Thursday that he would talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Ukraine war only if he’s serious about putting an end to the conflict, the Russian official said that his conditions are something that Moscow will not accept despite the fact that the preferred path for securing Russia’s interest is peaceful diplomacy.
Peskov explained that, in the meantime, Moscow’s special military operation continues, and that President Putin was, is, and will be open to contacts for talks.
The US President’s attempts to broker Ukraine peace talks, noting that the only way he would speak with his Russian counterpart and for the war in Ukraine to end was for Putin to pull out his troops, were made on Thursday during his joint press conference with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron.
The spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin also assessed that, at the moment, there was little space for Washington and Moscow to negotiate on Ukraine since the US makes the search for possible grounds for discussion much more difficult by refusing to recognize the new – formerly Ukrainian – territories that joined the Russian Federation.
Peskov was referring to four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September but whereas Russian forces in eastern Ukraine occupy most of Luhansk, they are on the back foot in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, and their invasion of Donetsk has stalled.
Previously, Moscow demanded sweeping security guarantees, including a reversal of NATO’s eastern enlargement.
The spokesperson for the US National Security Council, John Kirby, noted on Wednesday that Moscow has shown no signs that its military operations are either going to slow down or stop completely in Ukraine.
Adding to Biden’s comments, Macron emphasized that it is up to Kyiv to decide when conditions have been met before beginning peace talks with Russia, underscoring that the West will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that is not acceptable to them.
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