Blinken: Kyiv will negotiate if Moscow initiates

Kyiv will enter into negotiations if Moscow shows such an initiative. About it stated US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in an interview with ABC.

“When it comes to negotiations, it takes two to tango. So far we haven’t seen any signs that [президент РФ] Vladimir Putin is interested in diplomacy. If he wants to, I think the Ukrainians will be the first to negotiate,” Blinken said.

He added that the United States would follow Ukraine in this matter, and stressed that the decision on “how exactly all this will end” would be made by Kyiv. Blinken said the fighting must be resolved “on fair and sustainable terms that will reflect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

At the same time, Blinken noted that during his visit to Kyiv, the Ukrainian authorities expressed a “serious attitude” to continue efforts “to return the territory.”

Since the beginning of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, the parties have held talks several times in February and March 2022. The first three face-to-face meetings took place in Belarus in February-March, and the fourth round of the Russian-Ukrainian dialogue was held on March 29, 2022 in Istanbul. After that, the process was frozen, since Kyiv withdrew from it.

On October 4, 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree refusing negotiations with Russia as long as Putin is its president. In the autumn of the same year, he presented a “peace formula” according to which Ukraine must preserve its territorial integrity. Moscow called the plan unrealistic.

The Kremlin has repeatedly asserted that it is open to negotiations, while the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov saidthat Russia will not follow someone else’s conditions, since it focuses only on its own goals and common sense. He also indicated to the “irreconcilable position” of Kyiv, which, according to Peskov, the Ukrainian authorities maintain, even being “in a rather difficult situation.”