Europe 1 with AFP
modified to
09:56, February 27, 2022
The Ukrainian president said he was ready this Sunday for negotiations with Moscow, but not in Belarus, as proposed by Russia. In a video posted online this morning, he claimed ‘any city’ would suit him, but not Gomel.
The Ukrainian president on Sunday rejected the Russian proposal for talks in Gomel in Belarus, because this country serves as a rear base for the invasion of Ukraine, saying that “any other city” would be suitable. “Warsaw, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Baku. We offered them all. And any other city would suit us,” he said in an online video.
Russia says it wants to negotiate in Belarus
Addressing the Belarusians in this speech, he points out that “if on your territory there were no offensive actions, we could have talked to Minsk”. Already on Friday, Russia had said it wanted to negotiate with the Ukrainians but only in Belarus, although the invasion of northern Ukraine and the offensive on Kiev started from this country.
On Sunday, the Kremlin did it again. A delegation of representatives of “ministries of foreign affairs, defense and other services, including the presidential administration arrived in Belarus for negotiations with the Ukrainians”, according to the spokesman of the Russian presidency, quoted by national agencies.
In addition, when his services spoke of talks on Friday, President Vladimir Putin called on the Ukrainian army to stage a coup and called the country’s authorities a “clique of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”.