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Zelensky says Ukraine ready to discuss neutrality in peace talks with Russia
Ukraine is able to declare neutrality, abandon its drive to hitch Nato and vow to not develop nuclear weapons if Russia withdraws troops and Kyiv receives safety ensures, President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned on the eve of a brand new spherical of peace talks in Turkey.
Talking in Russian, Zelensky instructed a gaggle of Russian unbiased journalists on Sunday that Kyiv was ready to satisfy Moscow on a few of its calls for given that the adjustments had been put to a referendum and third events promised to guard Ukraine.
“Safety ensures and neutrality, the non-nuclear standing of our state — we’re prepared to do this. That’s a very powerful level [ . . . ] they began the battle due to it,” Zelensky mentioned.
Russia’s media censor ordered the 4 reporters to not publish the interview and vowed to research them — regardless that it had already blocked a web site that one in all them edits and shut down a TV station previously run by one other.
Zelensky mentioned Ukraine’s essential purpose was to finish the battle as rapidly as potential and make Russia’s forces withdraw to their positions earlier than Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on February 24.
He mentioned he was “99.9 per cent positive” the Russian president had thought Ukraine can be ready for the invasion with “flowers and smiles” — going as far as to ship troops with parade gown for a victory celebration in Kyiv apparently deliberate for the third or fourth day of the battle.
However Zelensky mentioned Ukraine was ready to carry separate discussions on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and the japanese Donbas border area, the place greater than 14,000 individuals have died in a slow-burning separatist battle involving Russian proxies that broke out quickly afterwards.
“I perceive it’s not potential to make Russia utterly depart the territory — that’ll result in world battle three,” Zelensky mentioned. “That’s why I’m saying this can be a compromise. Return to the place this all began after which we’ll attempt to clear up the troublesome Donbas challenge.”
Delegations from Ukraine and Russia are set to satisfy on Monday in Ankara for 3 days of talks aimed toward ending Putin’s month-long invasion.
However Zelensky performed down feedback by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, that Ukraine and Russia had been near a deal on 4 factors. He mentioned peace might solely be achieved by means of a gathering with Putin.
“So we meet, we make a deal, and that’s sufficient — we signal a deal, stamp it, or signal it in blood. That’s sufficient to start out the troop withdrawal course of. The troops should be withdrawn, everybody indicators the ensures, and that’s it,” Zelensky mentioned.
In change for giving up its need to hitch Nato — an aspiration mirrored in Ukraine’s structure — Kyiv needs the brand new agreements to be extra like Nato’s Article 5 in requiring the nation’s protectors to return to its support whether it is attacked.
Zelensky mentioned he needed to place the choice to a referendum, which he mentioned would take “a number of months”, earlier than embarking on constitutional adjustments that may require at the least a 12 months of labor.
“The guarantors received’t signal something if we’ve got troops [on our territory]. That’s why I believe we might end the battle rapidly. It’s simply Putin and his entourage who’re dragging it out,” Zelensky mentioned. “Who’s going to speak about something if troops are nonetheless there? Who’s going to signal something? Nothing will occur, it’s unimaginable.”
He added that Ukraine refused to debate two different Russian calls for on the talks: “denazification” and “demilitarisation”. These had been “utterly incomprehensible issues”, he mentioned.
Ukraine and its western backers concern Russia could also be utilizing the talks as a smokescreen whereas it regroups its forces for a brand new offensive and builds up new battle teams close to the border.
On Sunday, the US secretary of state Antony Blinken mentioned Washington will present an additional $100mn in civilian safety help to Ukraine to assist civil regulation enforcement and defend authorities infrastructure.
In a press release, Blinken mentioned the cash would assist proceed to safe private safety tools, tactical and communications tools, medical provides and armoured autos for Ukraine’s border guard service and its nationwide police power.
Fierce preventing additionally continued to rage within the east and north, with Ukraine claiming it had clawed again territory alongside provide routes close to Kyiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.
Russia stepped up its missile assaults on gas and meals depots for a 3rd day. Ukraine reported strikes in Lutsk, Zhytomyr and Rivne within the west and Kharkiv within the east in addition to “carpet bombing” on Mariupol, the south-eastern port metropolis the place the battle’s worst clashes have erupted and which has been virtually destroyed.
Zelensky mentioned Ukraine was ready to contemplate giving the Russian language protected minority standing if it acquired analogous ensures from Moscow on Ukrainian. However he mentioned Putin had performed “irreparable harm” to the Russian language in Ukraine by means of brutal assaults on primarily Russian-speaking cities corresponding to Mariupol.
“These Russian-speaking cities are those which have been wiped from the face of the earth. And these households,” Zelensky mentioned.
He mentioned 90 per cent of the buildings in Mariupol, which beforehand had a inhabitants of 400,000, had been destroyed, “however they had been at the least multistorey, so you may think about what was there”. Smaller cities however had been utterly destroyed.
“I don’t know who else the Russian military ever handled like this,” the president mentioned, including that the destruction was worse than throughout Moscow’s two campaigns in Chechnya within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s.