President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Saturday that peace discussions with Russia could not have “real results” without Ukraine, and invited his allies to find a format of talks including kyiv.
“It is impossible to exclude Ukraine from any negotiation platform. Or this negotiation platform will have no real results, “said the Ukrainian president during a meeting in kyiv with his Moldavian counterpart Maia Sandu.
“Before any meeting, whatever it is, it is necessary to establish a format on paper: how can we reach a fair peace?” I think we should focus on this point today, “he said, fearing that Russia will choose the form of a” peace decree “without the downstream of Ukraine.
Since the election of Donald Trump in the White House, speculations on possible peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have continued to swell, on the eve of the third anniversary of a high intensity conflict.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir said he was “ready to work” with the United States to “negotiations on Ukrainian issues”, praising the “pragmatic” and “intelligent” character of his American counterpart.
If the Kremlin did not specify when the discussions could take place, the Russian administration said to wait for Washington “signals”, Trump having announced Thursday that he was ready to meet Mr. Putin “immediately”.
At the beginning of the week, following his nomination, the new tenant of the White House had described this deadly war as “ridiculous” and had threatened Russia new economic sanctions if it did not accept to sit at the talks.
No “common plan”
However, President Zelensky admitted that he could not say “what type of negotiations will take place, what will be the structure of the negotiation process, because we have no common plan”, wishing that the United States, Ukraine , Russia and the European Union discuss a format together.
The chief of staff of the presidency Andriï Iermak had already assured Friday that kyiv was opposed to any peace negotiation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump without Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin wants to “negotiate the fate of Europe without Europe”, he denounced.
-Presented to his allies in September and then publicly revealed in mid-October, Volodymyr Zelensky had detailed his “victory plan” supposed to guarantee Ukraine a “just peace”.
He also estimated in a video broadcast on Wednesday that Ukraine would need “at least 200,000 European troops” on his soil to guarantee the security of the country in the event of a truce, and thus avoid a new invasion.
In inferiority and less well equipped, Ukraine continues to lose ground on the battlefield.
Moscow troops are now getting closer to the Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, located in the center of the country, a first since the start of the war in February 2022.
A penetration of the Russian forces in this region could lead Moscow to claim a sixth Ukrainian region.
If President Donald Trump explained that he could end the war in the war, the fighting continues to intensify on both sides of the front line.
On Saturday, air attacks affected a residential building in the kyiv region, according to the Ukrainian authorities, without making victims.
Russian strikes also injured three people in the Kharkiv region, in the northeast. In the occupied Russian territories of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, three people were killed in a Ukrainian strike according to the occupation authorities.
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