Russia sets conditions regarding territories and “neutrality”

The condition for the conclusion of the peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia is the waiver by Kiev four occupied Ukrainian circuits and annexed Crimea – according to the Tuesday's statement of the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryszkin.

If Ukraine wants to conclude a peace agreement, the regions annexed by Russia – Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporoskie region – such conditions were presented by Naryszkin, quoted by Moscow Times.

Peace conditions also provide for “recognition of sovereignty” and “current territorial boundaries” by Russia – he added.

He also mentioned the condition of “neutrality” of Ukraine and reserved that Kiev could not have nuclear weapons. He also pointed to the need for “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine.

Naryszkin announced that Russia would demand the cancellation of “all discriminatory provisions” that were supposed to be adopted in Ukraine after 2014. The same conditions Russian authorities came before the start of the full -scale invasion.

Earlier, other Russian representatives demanded that Kyiv waive the territories occupied by Russia.

The estimates presented by Moscow Times show that until February the Russian army took 98.6 percent. territory of the Lugansk region, 62.2 percent Donetski, 71.9 percent Zaporoski and 69.3 percent Chersonian. Russia does not control the two main cities of the Zaporoski and Kherson region, i.e. Zaporozhye and Chersonia.

The Ukrainian authorities emphasize that the recognition of any Ukrainian lands occupied by Russia as Russian is a “red line” for Kiev, which they will not exceed.

A special US envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who met on Friday in St. Petersburg with Vladimir Putin, emphasized that the Russian leader presented the conditions for achieving a lasting peace. In an interview with Fox News, he assessed that the agreement with Russia on war “emerges” and may change relations between the two countries.

Witkoff did not reveal what Putin demanded, but stated that the peace agreement mainly concerns “the so -called five territories” – the circuits of Ukraine annexed by Russia – but also many other matters.

As Moscow Times wrote, Russia is trying to extend the peace conversation to take up as much territory as possible. According to the website interlocutor, a person close to the Kremlin, Putin intends to “achieve full control over Ukrainian circuits at all costs, whose” joining “to the Russian Federation has already been entered in the Russian constitution. The interlocutor of Moscow Times said that current military forces are not able to fight for Kherson and Zaporozhye, so they can try to take other territories, for example part of the Dnepropetrovsk or Sumsk region. Occupied lands in other regions could then be replaced with some of the annexed circuits, which is not under Russian control.

On February 24, 2020, the President of Russia issued an order to carry out a “special military operation”, which was to be “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”. According to the authorities of the authorities in Kiev from the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022, about 13,000 were killed. Ukrainian civilians, including over 600 children. (PAP)

NDD/ MMS/