Kyiv: Russia wants negotiations to have time to prepare a new attack

Russia seeks to drag it Ukraine in new negotiations to give it time to restore its military capabilities and launch a new offensive, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency claimed today.

For weeks now, the Kremlin “is trying to persuade Ukraine to engage in negotiations” to “freeze the conflict, maintaining the current status quo in the occupied Ukrainian territories”, Mihailo Podoliak told AFP and relayed by the Athens News Agency. Russia “conveys its proposals through various mediators,” he added, without naming them.

According to Kyiv there is currently no contact with the Russia at the political level.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who met his Russian counterpart in early August and then went to Ukraine on Friday for the first time in six months, has repeatedly said he is ready to mediate between Kiev and Moscow.

Ukraine believes that in reality Moscow “does not want” serious peace negotiations

Ukraine, however, believes that in reality Moscow “does not want” serious peace negotiations but only a “business interruption” for its army so that it could then launch a new attack, Podoliak commented.

Kyiv rejects any negotiations over Russian-held territory, which it hopes to recapture. These include the territories under the control of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as well as the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Podoliak assured that “Ukrainians will continue to resist as long as necessary. It is a war for our existence, we have no other solution. Abandoning the struggle will mean not only the destruction of the Ukrainian state but also of all its citizens,” he underlined.

Source: News Beast

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