Wednesday, December 1st, 2021
Kiev should talk to separatists
Zelenskyi is dismissed from Putin because of eastern Ukraine
Russia’s troop deployment on the border with Ukraine causes concern in Kiev. President Zelenskyi wants to talk to Putin about the current situation – but the Kremlin chief declines. Zelenskyi should rather negotiate with the separatists in Donbass, Moscow says coolly.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj has called for direct talks with Russia about the worsening conflict in eastern Ukraine. However, the Presidential Office in Moscow said the Ukrainian leadership must speak to the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass. They have been fighting with the Ukrainian military there for years. Tensions are heightened by the gathering of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers on both sides of the border.
NATO, which is currently holding its Foreign Ministers meeting in Riga, Ukraine and the US have expressed concerns about unusual Russian troop movements. The leadership in Moscow has stated that this is done solely for defense purposes. “To tell the truth, we will not be able to end the war without direct negotiations with Russia,” Zelenskyi told the parliament in Kiev. “And this was recognized today by all external partners.”
“Conversations for the sake of conversations pointless”
The Ukrainian government said it had already tried to arrange a personal meeting between Zelenskyi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The request for it was ignored. The Russian Presidential Office said Putin was not against the idea of such a consultation. But conversations for the sake of conversations are pointless. The Russian leadership would rather work out a proper agenda for a discussion.
Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in the Black Sea in 2014; Donbass is the area in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting Ukrainian soldiers since 2014. The spokesman for the presidential office in Moscow, Dmitri Peskov, said at a press conference that Russia is not in a position to de-escalate in the region once Ukraine has pulled together more than 120,000 soldiers in Donbass. “Russia cannot take any de-escalation measures,” said Peskov.
Russia is seriously concerned about the large number of Ukrainian soldiers near its border. This raises fears that the leadership in Kiev might try to resolve the conflict with the separatists in Donbass militarily. “This is a very dangerous adventure. We are very concerned about all of this because it happens very close to our border.”