Russian officials outline what the West needs to do for the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv to end.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on January 20 that relations between Russia and the United States are at an all-time low, in the context of the crisis in Ukraine not yet over.
He said that, while the conflict is getting worse and worse, the only way to reverse it is for Western countries to admit their mistakes and change their policies (on Russia and Ukraine). He called on the US and its allies to respond to security concerns from Russia and correct previous mistakes in the Donbas region.
In the past two years, bilateral relations between Russia and the United States have been very bad, and there is “no hope of improvement anytime soon,” Peskov said.
“We can see an increasing indirect and sometimes direct involvement of NATO countries in this conflict,” he said. He said the West is acting with “the illusion that Ukraine has a chance to win on the battlefield”.
In order for the deadlock to be resolved, Peskov called for the US and its allies to turn back the clock to the end of 2021, “when Russia proposed a discussion on security concerns”. their own on the negotiating table” but was rejected by the West.
He accused Germany, France, and Ukraine of not seriously implementing the Minsk agreement and now it’s time to correct the mistake. He mentioned the agreement that helped create a roadmap to resolve the conflict in Ukraine that the three countries signed with Russia in 2015.
Earlier, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the deal they negotiated with Russia was a way to give Ukraine more time to rebuild its military.
Russia alleges that the admission is evidence that the negotiations were conducted in a bad faith and that the Ukrainian government and its supporters have always intended to cause the Minsk agreement to fail and let the Minsk deal fail. the confrontation in the Donbas was resolved by military means.
Russia sent a series of security proposals to NATO and the US in December 2021. In it, Moscow demanded that NATO withdraw its offensive weapons from the area near the Russian border and ensure that Ukraine never joins the US-led military alliance.
In January 2022, the US and NATO rejected the proposal, saying they would only be interested in negotiations aimed at strategic arms control. NATO also gave the green light to admit Sweden and Finland.
Late last year, Alexander Darchiev, director of the North American Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said: “It will be too early to start any serious negotiations on security guarantees regarding the situation in Ukraine and the region. Europe – Atlantic as long as arms and money are transferred to the regime (of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky); as long as US and NATO troops/mercenaries/instructors remain in Ukraine; and unless certain facts on the ground are recognized. The ball is now in America’s court.”
