Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the world to pressure Russia into “genuine peace negotiations” with Ukraine in an address to the nation on Monday, insisting his administration had “repeatedly proposed” talks but received only “insane” responses.
Russia first invaded Ukraine nearly a decade ago, in 2014, and has been waging a proxy war in the eastern Donbas region since the invasion and colonization of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March of that year. Russian leader Vladimir Putin escalated the conflict into a full-scale invasion this February, formally introducing Russian troops into the battle theater and bombing major urban centers, including the capital, Kyiv. He has since announced the “annexation” of four more regions of Ukraine – Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk – and eschewed negotiations.
Zelensky – who told the United Nations in September that his country had engaged in “88 rounds of talks” with Russia between March 2014 and February 2022 – had also refused negotiations without a clear Russian military departure from Ukrainian soil. Last month, he issued a formal decree declaring talks with Putin, personally, “impossible.”
Zelensky’s remarks on Monday appear to indicate a change in tone that followed reports that Washington had begun urging his administration to at least speak publicly of negotiations. Discussing an address he delivered to COP27, a climate change alarmism summit in Egypt, he claimed that he used the opportunity to discuss talks.
‘I delivered an important international address today. Climate summit in Egypt. A very significant event, a very representative gathering,” Zelensky told the Ukrainian public. “The main thing for us is to inform the world about the ongoing Russian aggression, about the destabilizing influence that Russia exerts.”
“When the world is focused on combating war, energy and food crises, the destruction of customary international relations, the climate agenda is clearly suffering. And the destruction of the climate cannot somehow be put on hold,” he argued. “Therefore, anyone who is serious about the climate agenda should also be serious about the need to immediately stop Russian aggression, restore our territorial integrity, and force Russia into genuine peace negotiations.”
“Into such negotiations, which we have repeatedly proposed,” he continued, “and to which we always received insane Russian responses with new terrorist attacks, shelling or blackmail.”
Zelensky predicated any talks on Russia agreeing to the “restoration of territorial integrity, respect for the UN Charter, compensation for all damages caused by the war, punishment of every war criminal and guarantees that this will not happen again.” He did not mention Putin personally, suggesting that any talks would still have to be predicated on Putin not participating in them – essentially a call for regime change in Russia.
Zelensky sent a video message to COP27 – according to the United Nations, which hosts the conference – but the U.N. has yet to make the video publicly available at press time. The Washington Post published some abbreviated excerpts of his remarks that match Zelensky’s own description of his message.
Zelensky presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also mentioned potential negotiations in an interview published Tuesday in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, predicating them not on Putin’s ouster, but on Russia’s ouster from Ukrainian land.
“Negotiating with Putin would mean giving up, and we would never give him this gift … The Russian army will leave Ukrainian territory, and then dialogue will come,” Podolyak was quoted as saying, according to a translation by Reuters.
The Ukrainian state outlet Ukrinform reported on Tuesday that Zelensky began the formal process to extend the current state of martial law and “general mobilization” of troops, indicating no expectation of talks or an end to hostilities in the short term.
The resurgence of a discussion surrounding potential Ukraine-Russia negotiations follows an anonymous report citing “people” in the Washington Post claiming that the administration of leftist President Joe Biden, Ukraine’s most prolific military funder, is pressuring Zelensky to discuss potential talks more openly.
“The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power,” the Post claimed, emphasizing that its sources did not believe that the Biden administration was seeking genuine talks, but only the public impression of openness to talks to combat global “Ukraine fatigue.”
“The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, these people said,” the Post said. “Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come.”
The Biden administration has appropriated $65 billion in mostly military aid for Zelensky and is reportedly planning to send another $50 billion to Kyiv, NBC News reported last week.
Particularly fueling “Ukraine fatigue,” the newspaper claimed, was a presidential decree from Zelensky proclaiming talks with Putin “impossible.”
File/Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrive for a working session at the Elysee Palace Monday, Dec. 9, 2019 in Paris. (Ian Langsdon/Pool via AP)
“He (Putin) does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialog with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky said in early October.
Zelensky told the world during the United Nations General Assembly in September that Putin had essentially exhausted his country’s patience with talks.
“We held 88 rounds of talks in various formats to prevent this war, just from the beginning of my presidency until February 24 this year,” he said, announcing that only through “punishment” for Russia could dialogue return as a potential solution to the war.
Zelensky’s last in-person meeting for war talks with Putin occurred in late 2019, chaperoned by French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Exasperated, Zelensky described conversing with Putin as “very difficult” and hinted at serious personality tensions with the Russian leader.
“Look, it’s very difficult to negotiate [with Putin], but today there were moments when we agreed on something, on certain things,” Zelensky told reporters. “That’s because he dissects every question into details … and then we begin to even consider every word. So yes, this is difficult. I’m just a different person, I’m a quick person. I thought that we could just sit down real quick and have a deal … But it’s different here, it’s different biomechanics, so to speak.”