President Vladimir Putin is ready to send a delegation for talks with Ukraine, as its military encircled Kyiv on the second day of the Moscow invasion. According to the Kremlin, the negotiations could put an end to Ukraine’s NATO ambitions after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was willing to discuss Ukraine’s “neutrality” — a demand of Putin's — in his latest attempt to appeal to the Russian leader to negotiate.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Putin is “ready” to send a high-level delegation “for talks with a Ukrainian delegation” to Belarusian capital Minsk, which has previously hosted rounds of peace talks over Ukraine, such as the negotiations for an eastern Ukraine ceasefire in 2014 and 2015. He added that Putin’s ally, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, told him that he would “create the conditions” for such a summit.
China’s foreign ministry has also stated that Putin told Chinese leader Xi Jinping by phone that “Russia is ready for high-level talks with Ukraine.”
The delegation would comprise of Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Presidential Administration officials.
The Kremlin spokesman reiterated Putin’s stated goal of invading Ukraine to “help” eastern Ukraine’s pro-Moscow breakaway republics “including through the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.”
“This, in fact, is an integral component of [Ukraine’s] neutral status,” Peskov told reporters.
Putin’s unfounded claim that Ukraine is under the neo-Nazi rule is a key part of the Kremlin’s justification for the war.
Putin recognized the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics as independent and mounted the military campaign against Ukraine after they requested his military assistance this week.
