Moscow is interested in a lasting peace with Kiev, but not a short-lived truce, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
Russia’s goal is to ensure its long-term security interests, Putin stressed during a meeting on Friday with the heads of leading BRICS media agencies at the presidential residence in Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow.
"If we are talking about some kind of peace processes, then these should not be processes related to a ceasefire for a week, two weeks, or a year, so that NATO countries [which support Ukraine] could rearm and stock up on new ammunition,” he said.
Moscow is looking to achieve “conditions for long-term, sustainable and lasting peace that provide equal security for all participants in this difficult process,” the Russian leader explained.
Putin stressed that the Russian authorities “respect and understand” the determination of their “friends” in BRICS and elsewhere to see the Ukrainian crisis resolved “as quickly as possible and by peaceful means.”
Moscow realizes that the conflict is “an irritating element in international affairs, in European affairs, in the economy, and so on. We, like no one else, are interested in ending it as quickly as possible and, of course, by peaceful means,” he said.
Russia is ready to return to talks with Ukraine, but only on the basis of the document drawn up in Istanbul in late March 2022, when the sides last sat at the negotiating table, the head of state insisted.
Putin said last month that during the talks in Türkiye, Kiev was willing to declare military neutrality, limit its armed forces, and stop discriminating against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading world powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees.
“The document did not come into force only because the Ukrainians were ordered not to do this. The elites in the US and some European countries felt the desire to seek Russia’s strategic defeat,” the Russian president said at the time.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky finally made public his so-called ‘victory plan’ for the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, in a speech to the national parliament. According to Zelensky, the scheme does not include negotiations with Russia, but calls on the West “to strengthen Ukraine” in order to reach a diplomatic solution.
“This plan can be implemented. It depends on our partners. I emphasize: on partners. It definitely does not depend on Russia,” he claimed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has suggested that Zelensky’s plan is merely a roadmap for continuing the hostilities. Peace can only be achieved if the government in Kiev “sobers up” and acknowledges the roots of the problems that led to the fighting, he insisted.