Negotiations with Russia only possible with our partners at the table, says Ukraine’s defense minister
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov (Photo:Ritzau Scanpix/Martin Sylvest via REUTERS)
Negotiations with Russia are only possible if Ukraine's partners sit at the table too, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in an interview with Ukrainian news website Ukrainska Pravda on Aug 11.
And according to Reznikov, if Russia holds sham "referendums" in the occupied territories, there will be no chance of any negotiations with Russia at all.
He said that for him "no news from the Kremlin is a source of information that can be trusted."
“This is their public stance,” said Reznikov. “We have our own public stance, which was clearly voiced by (Ukrainian) President Zelenskyy.”
Earlier, adviser to the head of the President's Office Mykhailo Podolyak said that Russia didn’t need negotiations, but an operational pause in order to make adjustments to its military strategy.
According to Podolyak, Russia wasn’t prepared for the war that it launched on the territory of Ukraine, because it neither knew nor understood Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy has said that it would be inappropriate to hold negotiations with Russia at the moment. The occupied territories must be liberated first, he says.
Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, said on Aug. 3 that Russia was ready for negotiations with Ukraine "on its own terms."
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