Putin says Russia is ready to negotiate on Ukraine

Russia is willing to negotiate with all parties involved in the ukrainian warbut kyiv and its Western supporters have refused to enter into talks, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24 has triggered the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

At the moment, the end of the war is not in sight.

The Kremlin says it will fight until it achieves all its goals, while kyiv says it will not rest until it drives all Russian soldiers out of its territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

We are willing to negotiate acceptable solutions with all those involved, but that depends on them; It is not us who refuse to negotiate, it is them,” Putin told Rossiya 1 state television.

CIA director William Burns said in an interview published this month that while most conflicts end in negotiation, the CIA’s assessment was that Russia was not yet serious about actual negotiation to end the war. war.

An adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Putin had to come back to reality and acknowledge that it was Russia that did not want any negotiations.

“Russia attacked Ukraine alone and is killing citizens,” Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. “Russia does not want negotiations, but tries to evade its responsibility.”

“No choice”

Putin said that Russia was acting in the “right direction” in Ukraine because the West, led by the United States, was trying to divide Russia. Washington denies plotting Russia’s collapse.

“I think we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, of our people. And we have no choice but to protect our citizens,” Putin declared.

Asked if the geopolitical conflict with the West was approaching a dangerous level, Putin replied: “I don’t think it is that dangerous.”

Putin said the West had started the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 by ousting a pro-Russian president in the Maidan Revolution protests.

Shortly after that revolution, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, and Russian-backed separatist forces began fighting the Ukrainian armed forces in eastern Ukraine.

“Actually, what is fundamental here is the policy of our geopolitical adversaries, whose goal is to separate Russia, historical Russia,” Putin said.

Putin sees what he calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine as a watershed moment as Moscow finally confronted a Western bloc he says has been trying to destroy Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Ukraine and the West claim that Putin has no justification for what they see as an imperial-style war of occupation that has sown suffering and death across Ukraine.

Putin described Russia as a “unique country” and said the vast majority of its people were united in their desire to defend it.

“As for the main part – 99.9% of our citizens, our people who are ready to give everything for the interests of the motherland – there is nothing strange for me here,” Putin said.

“This once again convinces me that Russia is a unique country and that we have an exceptional people. This has been confirmed throughout the history of Russia’s existence.”