Negotiations on Ukraine with EU will be difficult due to lack of trust-Putin
2022.12.09 11:45
Negotiations on Ukraine with EU will be difficult due to lack of trust-Putin
Budrigannews.com – Even though contacts between Russian and U.S. intelligence services were at least continuing, President Vladimir Putin stated on Friday that Russia’s near-total loss of trust in the West would make it much harder to reach a settlement regarding Ukraine.
Putin has increasingly framed his more than nine-month-old invasion of Ukraine as a struggle to defend Russia against an aggressive “collective West” after suffering a series of battlefield reverses.
Putin lamented the failure to implement the Minsk agreements, ceasefire and constitutional reform agreements between Kiev and Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine that were brokered in 2014 and 2015 by Russia, France, and Germany at the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine. These agreements were held at a news conference in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.
“We believed that we would still be able to reach an agreement within the framework of the peace agreements of Minsk. What are your words? Putin stated, “There is a question of trust.” Naturally, there is almost no trust.
One of the sponsors of the agreements, former German chancellor Angela Merkel, said in an interview with Zeit magazine published on Wednesday that the 2014 agreement had been “an attempt to give Ukraine time,” which it had used to become more able to defend itself. Putin was asked about this.
This has been quickly interpreted by Russian politicians and media as a betrayal on Merkel’s part.
Putin stated, “It turns out that no one was going to fulfill all these Minsk agreements,” and the purpose was “only to pump up Ukraine with weapons and prepare it for hostilities.”
He continued, “The question arises after a statement like that, the question of how to negotiate, about what, and whether it is possible to negotiate with someone, and where are the guarantees.”
“Regardless, an agreement must be reached in the end. We are open and ready for these agreements, as I have repeatedly stated, but this makes us question who we are dealing with.”
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, and Sergei Ryabkov, Deputy Defense Minister, both made it clear on Friday that the release of American basketball star Brittney Griner from a Russian penal colony on Thursday in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout did not signal a wider thaw in the tense relationship between the two countries.
But Putin did say that Russia was open to more swaps of this kind, and he said that the intelligence services that agreed on the Griner-Bout deal were still in touch.
He stated, “In point of fact, they have never stopped.” A deal was reached: We are not opposed to carrying on this work in the future.”
The highest level of face-to-face communication between the two sides since Russia invaded Ukraine in February took place on November 14, when U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns and Russian Foreign Intelligence Chief Sergei Naryshkin met in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
Afterward, a spokesperson for the White House said that Burns had not led negotiations or talked about a way to end the war in Ukraine. However, he did mention the cases of Americans detained in Russia and warned Russia not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, which could threaten strategic stability.
Naryshkin said a while later that he and Copies had examined Ukraine and atomic security.
