Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday, insisted Moscow has \u201cnever refused to negotiate\u201d an end to the conflict in Ukraine but accused Kyiv of walking away from previous peace efforts at the behest of its Western allies.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Russians exactly one year after ordering troops into Ukraine, Putin portrayed his government as being open to a diplomatic resolution through \u201cnegotiations that take into account the interests of all countries involved.\u201d However, he claimed it was Ukraine that \u201cunexpectedly announced the termination of negotiations\u201d last year after preliminary talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Ukrainian officials later said, this was because their Western allies urged them to continue fighting and work together to strategically defeat Russia,\u201d Putin told viewers, repeating the Kremlin\u2019s longstanding claims that the U.S. and NATO are directly fueling the conflict.<\/p>\n
The Russian leader stated Moscow wants \u201ca comprehensive, sustainable and fair settlement of this conflict by peaceful means,\u201d but said any future talks must address Russia\u2019s security demands regarding NATO expansion into Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n
Putin\u2019s comments marked his latest attempt to cast Russia as the level-headed party in the conflict, one year after his forces launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine that has turned cities into rubble, killed tens of thousands, and drawn widespread international condemnation.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Western backers have repeatedly said they will not engage in any negotiations until all Russian troops withdraw from occupied territories in Ukraine. Kyiv officials insist there is no ambiguity about why talks collapsed \u2013 it was Russia\u2019s relentless bombardment of Ukrainian cities and its forces\u2019 atrocities that made any diplomacy impossible.<\/p>\n
During the address, Putin offered no specific new offramp to end the fighting and gave no indication that Russia would pull back troops from the 18% of Ukraine\u2019s territory its forces still occupy, including the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014. He also made no mention of a rumoured new mobilization of Russian men to replenish a military force depleted by over 200,000 casualties.<\/p>\n
Instead, Putin repeated his litany of grievances about NATO\u2019s post-Cold War expansion and unfounded claims that Ukraine was being turned into an \u201canti-Russian foothold\u201d that left him no choice but to attack. Despite tens of billions of dollars in economic damage from biting sanctions, Putin insisted the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d was necessary to protect Russian speakers and prevent \u201cgenocide\u201d \u2013 a claim widely dismissed by international observers.<\/p>\n
While the Russian leader cast the invasion as an existential defensive move, it is Ukraine that now finds its very existence under threat. Putin\u2019s forces have failed to capture Kyiv and their bombardment of cities like Bakhmut and Mariupol has caused some of the deadliest civilian suffering in Europe since World War II.<\/p>\n
With no end in sight to the fighting, Putin\u2019s remarks appeared to do little to substantiate Russia\u2019s purported desire for a negotiated peace. Facing dwindling resources and munitions, rising casualties, and diplomatic isolation, the Russian leader may simply be trying to buy time and shift responsibility for prolonging the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaking to Russians exactly one year after ordering troops into Ukraine, Putin portrayed his government as being open to a diplomatic resolution through \u201cnegotiations that take into account the interests of all countries involved.\u201d However, he claimed it was Ukraine that \u201cunexpectedly announced the termination of negotiations\u201d last year after preliminary talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":406,"featured_media":17293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[352,468,2460,280,9038,282,78,481,215],"class_list":["post-17289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-europe","tag-kremlin","tag-kyiv","tag-nato","tag-president-zelenskyy","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine","tag-ukraine"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}