Vladimir Putin wants to address “the roots” of the conflict he maintains with Ukraine to achieve “a solid and lasting peace.” And to achieve this goal, the Russian president offered Ukrainian leaders to establish “serious conversations”, a proposal that from Kyiv accepted.
In an unusual televised speech offered at the time of Saturday night from Kremlin, Putin said Russia wanted to resume direct negotiations with the Ukrainian authorities.
“This would be the first step to a solid and lasting peace, instead of a prologue to more armed hostilities after the Ukrainian army receives new weapons and personal and after the feverish excavation of trenches,” he said.
The conversations would take place on May 15 in Türkiye, added the president.
Hours later, the Russian offer was accepted by Ukraine, although with the condition that all hostilities are interrupted as of May 12.
“It is a positive sign that the Russians have finally started to consider the end of the war,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said he was “ready” to meet with his Russian counterpart.
War of proposals
Putin’s announcement occurred just hours after Zelensky and four of his narrowest European allies (United Kingdom, France, Germany and Poland) again demanded the Russian president to accept a 30 -day truce, under penalty of imposing new sanctions on Russia.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, responded to the ultimatum by stating that everything attempts to “pressure us is completely useless.”
However, in his speech, Putin did not rule out the possibility that conversations culminate in an agreement between Russia and Ukraine on a new truce.
“We are determined to have serious negotiations with Ukraine with the purpose of eliminating the roots that have caused the conflict and establishing a lasting peace with a historical perspective,” he said.
“We cannot exclude that during these negotiations it is possible to agree on a new truce or ceasefire,” he added.
However, he did not directly approach the calls for a high fire of 30 days.
The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, the new German Friedrich Merz and the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who are part of the so -called “coalition of the arranged”, a group of countries committed to support military to Ukraine, traveled to the Ukrainian capital.
The leaders warned that new and massive sanctions would be imposed on the energy and banking sectors of Russia if Putin did not accept the high the unconditional fire of 30 days “in the air, the sea and the earth.”
Kyiv’s conditions
Zelensky, meanwhile, greeted the announcement of his Russian counterpart.
“The entire world has been waiting for this for a long time (…) it makes no sense to continue the killing not even one day,” the Ukrainian president has written in his X (former Twitter).
However, from Kyiv they made it clear that an immediate cessation is necessary to carry out any type of negotiation.
“First, a 30 -day fire, then everything else,” said Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian President’s office, on his social networks.
“Russia should not camouflage your desire to continue the war with verbal contours. A high fire is the first step to end the war, and will confirm Russia’s disposition to end the murder,” he added.
The reactions to Putin’s proposal have not been waiting. Thus, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, described the announcement of the Russian ruler as a “potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine.”
“Think of the hundreds and thousands of lives that will be saved when this endless bloodbath, hopefully, comes to an end,” he wrote in his social Truth account, in which he predicted the birth of “a completely new and much better world.”
More cautious was the French president, who indicated that it is “a first step”, but “it is not enough.”
Macron also demanded a stop on fire immediately.
“There can be no negotiations while weapons speak,” he said.
Reasons to distrust
Putin, in his speech, announced that he would talk on Sunday his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to once again welcome bilateral negotiations.
Between March and April 2022, sentences after weeks after Moscow launched its large -scale invasion, in Istanbul Russian and Ukrainian delegations sought to put an end to the conflict.
However, on that occasion the conversations did not come to fruition and were suspended, once the massacre committed by Russian units in the Ukrainian city of Bucha was known.
The possibility that this announcement leads to the end of hostilities seems distant, according to Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent. Because? There are several reasons.
First, Putin did not accept the 30 -day truce proposed by Ukraine and his allies, but “wants to address what he calls’ the deep causes of the conflict.”
“From his point of view, that means the unacceptable ambition of Ukraine of being part of a prosperous and democratic Europe, instead of returning to the orbit of Moscow and becoming a flexible satellite nation like Belarus. He will also want a firm commitment that Ukraine will never enter NATO,” he wrote.
He also recalled that Moscow hopes that before accepting any high on the fire, the West will pray to stop assembling Ukraine.
“That, of course, would leave this country much less trained to defend against the gradual advances of Russia in the front line or, worse, of a new large -scale offensive to take more land,” the correspondent warned.
But while Putin made this new offer, in different points of Ukraine the fighting continued.
During the night, Russia attacked Ukraine with 108 drones, according to the Ukrainian air forces, Vitaliy Shevchenko, editor of Russia for the BBC reported.
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