Ukraine’s president has hinted he is open to peace talks with Russia, toning down his refusal to negotiate with Moscow while President Vladimir Putin is in power, while sticking to key Kyiv demands.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for the international community to “force Russia into real peace talks” reflected a change in rhetoric. At the end of September, after Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, he signed a decree declaring “the impossibility of holding talks” with Putin.
But the preconditions the Ukrainian leader listed on Monday night appear to be non-starters for Moscow, so it’s hard to see how Zelenskyy’s latest comments would move the talks forward.
Zelenskyy reiterated that his conditions for dialogue were the return of all occupied lands of Ukraine, compensation for war damages and the prosecution of war crimes. He did not specify how world leaders should coerce Russia into talks.
Western weapons and aid have been essential to Ukraine’s ability to fight off the Russian invasion, which some initially expected would tear the country apart with relative ease. This means that Kyiv cannot ignore how the war is perceived in the United States and the European Union, according to political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko.
“Zelensky is trying to maneuver because the promise of negotiations doesn’t bind Kyiv to anything, but it helps maintain support from Western partners,” said Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based independent think tank Penta Center.
“A categorical refusal to hold talks plays into the Kremlin’s hands, so Zelenskyy is changing tack and talking about the possibility of dialogue, but on terms that make everything very clear,” he added.
US midterms could complicate support
While support for Ukraine has garnered strong bipartisan support in the US Congress, growing conservative opposition could complicate that next year if Republicans take control of the House in Tuesday’s election.
Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent comments that lawmakers would not give Ukraine a “blank cheque” reflect the party’s growing skepticism about the cost of support.
Privately, Republican lawmakers who support aid to Ukraine see an opportunity to pass another tranche of aid this year with the current Congress.
Russia and Ukraine held several rounds of talks in Belarus and Turkey at the start of the war, which is now approaching its nine-month mark, and Zelensky has repeatedly called for a personal meeting with Putin – something the Kremlin has said. rejected.
The talks have stalled after the last meeting of the delegations, held in Istanbul in March, yielded no results.
Zelenskyy said Monday that Kyiv had “repeatedly offered [talks] and to which we have always received crazy Russian responses with new terrorist attacks, bombings or blackmail.”
Russia resumed calls for talks after beginning to lose ground to a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south in September. Zelenskyy rejected the chance to negotiate with Putin later that month after the Russian leader illegally claimed four regions of Ukraine as Russian territory.
Moscow accuses Kyiv of lacking ‘goodwill’
Zelenskyy said on Monday that Ukraine’s terms for dialogue included the “restoration of (Ukraine’s) territorial integrity…compensation for all war damages, punishment for every war criminal and guarantees that this will not happen again”.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said on Tuesday that Moscow was not setting any conditions for the talks to resume. He accused Kyiv of lacking “goodwill”.
“It’s their choice,” Rudenko said. “We have always said that we are ready for such negotiations.”
Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly claimed that the United States is preventing Ukraine from engaging in peace talks, which several countries have offered to mediate.
In an interview published on Tuesday, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Western countries would not push Kyiv to negotiate on Moscow’s terms.
“Ukraine receives rather effective weapons from its partners, first and foremost the United States,” Podolyak said. “We are pushing the Russian army out of our territory. And given that, it is nonsense to force us to negotiate, and de facto to give in to Russia’s ultimatum! No one will.”
US pledges $25 million in overwintering aid
The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations has reassured Ukrainian farmers that extending a wartime agreement allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grain and other goods across the Black Sea is a priority for the country. UN.
The UN-brokered deal with Turkey allowed more than 10 million tonnes of grain to leave Ukrainian ports and travel along a designated corridor. It is due to expire on November 19.
A Russian diplomat on Tuesday spoke of Moscow’s dissatisfaction with its implementation and said the Kremlin had not decided whether or not to extend it.
During a visit to Kyiv, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield was asked if she spoke to Ukrainians about US ideas for ending the war.
She replied, “Russia started this and Russia can end it, and they can end it by withdrawing their troops and stopping the atrocities they are committing against the Ukrainian people.”
She announced an additional US$25 million in aid to help Ukrainians get through the winter.
In his overnight address, Zelenskyy said around four million people were without power in 14 regions plus Kyiv city on Tuesday evening, but on a stabilization rather than an emergency basis.
Hourly scheduled power cuts would affect the whole country on Wednesday, Ukraine’s electricity grid operator Ukrenergo said.
In other developments:
- In Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where the Russians are struggling to gain full control, shelling from Moscow has killed three civilians and injured seven others in the past 24 hours, according to Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. He said the deaths occurred in the town of Bakhmut, a key target of Russia’s brutal offensive in Donetsk, and in the town of Krasnohorivka. Last week, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister described the Bakhmut region as the “epicenter” of fighting in eastern Ukraine.
- Elsewhere, two civilians were seriously injured by unexploded mines in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, where Kyiv forces recaptured large swathes of territory in September, the governor of Kharkiv said , Oleh Syniehubov.
- In the partially occupied southern region of Kherson, where Ukrainian troops are waging a successful counteroffensive, Russian-installed authorities said they had completed the evacuation of residents ahead of planned Ukrainian advances. The Kremlin-appointed administration has sought to relocate tens of thousands of people.
- Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show a rapid expansion of a cemetery in southern Ukraine in the months following the capture of the port city of Mariupol by Russian forces. It is not known how many people were buried there.
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