LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky on Sunday insisted on protecting his country’s territorial integrity, after earlier hinting he was willing to compromise, as they are due to open on Monday in Turkey peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
In a daily video address, Volodimir Zelensky said on Sunday evening that his government would give priority to the “territorial integrity” of Ukraine during the negotiations planned in Istanbul.
However, earlier in the day, the Ukrainian leader had struck a different tone with Russian journalists, saying that Kyiv was ready, within the framework of a peace agreement, to discuss a status of neutrality and to make a compromise. concerning the regions of Donbass, in the east of the country.
Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of wanting to split Ukraine in two by taking control of the east of the country.
“It is in fact an attempt to create a North and South Korea in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the division of Korea after World War II.
During a phone call with Vladimir Putin on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to host talks between Kyiv and Moscow, while calling for a ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions, his officials reported. services.
The holding of physical meetings between Ukrainian and Russian representatives has been confirmed by both sides.
On the sidelines of the announcement, senior US officials scrambled on Sunday to assure that Washington did not want regime change in Russia, after US President Joe Biden said at the end of a speech in Warsaw on Saturday that Vladimir Putin could “not stay in power”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House chief simply meant that the Russian president could not be empowered to wage war on Ukraine or elsewhere.
COUNTER-OFFENSIVES IN EASTERN UKRAINIA
After more than four weeks of offensive, the Russian army failed to take control of major Ukrainian cities. Moscow hinted on Friday that its goals were being revised to focus on controlling the Donbass region, where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014.
A leader of the separatist Luhansk region, from which Moscow declared independence, said the region could soon hold a referendum on its integration with Russia – a vote similar to that which occurred in Crimea, after Russia annexed the peninsula eight years ago, but not recognized by the international community.
The hypothesis of a referendum in the east of Ukraine was rejected by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via its spokesperson.
Moscow continues to deploy additional military units to the Ukrainian border while carrying out missile strikes and airstrikes against Ukrainian forces and military infrastructure, including in the city of Kharkov, the Ukrainian military said Sunday evening.
According to an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, the Russian army has started destroying fuel and food warehouses. Moscow appeared to confirm this information by reporting that missiles had destroyed a fuel depot and a military workshop near Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, on Saturday.
In eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces carried out counter-offensives as the Russian army tried to encircle them, an adviser to the presidency in Kyiv said.
(Reporting by Reuters journalists in Mariupol, Natalia Zinets and Maria Starkova in Lviv, Jarrett Renshaw in Warsaw and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; French version Jean Terzian)