The Kremlin has announced that the Ukrainian president is no longer a potential interlocutor for Putin, after Zelensky said he was “not interested” in meeting Putin.
“We know what the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky committed to during the presidential campaign and it is not difficult to remember or repeat to the voters who elected him. He has never solved the Donbass problem, from abandoned the Minsk Agreements. Moreover, it turned out that he never had a plan to do so because he was preparing for war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on January 26.
The statement was made by Dmitry when the press asked for comment on the Ukrainian president’s statement that he was “not interested” in meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin for peace talks.
“This is why he has long ceased to be a potential interlocutor for President Putin,” added Peskov.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in Moscow, Russia in 2021. Photo: Reuters.
When answering TV channel Sky News of Britain on January 26, Zelensky also said that the Russian president was “no one” to him after launching a military operation in Ukraine.
“I really don’t understand who makes the decisions in Russia,” the Ukrainian president said. “Who is he now? After the full-scale invasion, he is nobody to me!”
Zelensky had previously issued a decree banning negotiations with Russia. In response, Mr. Peskov stated that no negotiations between Moscow and Kiev are currently possible, as there are no conditions for them, either in practice or in law.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this month said it was pointless to seek talks with Mr Zelensky because the Ukrainian president was not the one to decide the country’s foreign policy.
The Kremlin’s comments came as the United States, Germany and Norway pledged dozens of battle tanks to Ukraine. Russia sees these commitments as evidence of the West’s increasingly direct involvement in hostilities. Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev accused the US and NATO of being involved in the conflict in Ukraine and seeking to prolong hostilities.
Huyen Le (Theo TASS, RT, AFP)