Zelenskyy says dialogue with ‘lying, terrorist’ Putin is ‘impossible’
Zelenskyy commented on the possibility of dialogue with Putin (Photo:Kremlin; ОП — колаж НВ)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he believes that negotiations with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin are impossible since the leader of the Kremlin regime “is a terrorist who does not keep his word.”
Asked about his attitude to negotiations with Putin, a Norwegian journalist reminded Zelenskyy that Kyiv and Moscow had attempted to take the diplomatic route until Feb. 24, 2022.
In response, Zelenskyy said that when he became president, he had tried to establish a dialogue and find a “practical solution” to the situation of the frozen conflict — the low-level war between Russia and Ukraine that had been simmering since Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
“I wanted for us to respect the (international) order, to respect the UN Charter. I wanted them to leave our territory. I wanted to solve this exclusively by diplomatic means,” Zelenskyy said.
However, he added that all efforts, calls, and attempts to restart the Minsk negotiations, and hundreds of meetings over nearly two years had not yielded anything, as “Russia did not want to resolve anything.”
“It was like a desert: you are not heard, nothing is wanted,” said Zelenskyy.
“You are trapped in this dialogue that has no result, because (they did not) want any result. The frozen conflict suited them because they were thinking about how to regain their Soviet influence.
“If you want to solve something, if you are not the aggressor — there must be some diplomatic conversation. And there was none. We had our chance.”
He added that at some point Moscow “started playing silence” and stopped contacting Ukraine. However, later the Russians began to put forward their conditions through third countries.
“By sending someone to us, they themselves did not get in touch. And they just started making threats, that’s all. So who are they?” said Zelenskyy.
The president said he believed that it is now impossible to talk to Putin.
“It is impossible to talk today with this person, President Putin,” Zelenskyy said.
“For us, for everyone, he is a terrorist. After he told the whole world that he was not going to capture territories, there will never be a full-scale war, that it cannot happen — he started everything. And in such a brutal form.”
Zelenskyy called Putin a “traveler in the world of bloody names,” as he calls his war of aggression against Ukraine a “special military operation.”
“He comes up with a name to justify his actions,” Zelenskyy said.
“There is no justification for this person anymore... Today he is a terrorist who also does not keep his word. How can we talk about anything?”
Russia at the end of September claimed it had annexed four Ukrainian territories — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson oblasts — even though it did not fully control any of them. Russia had earlier abandoned plans to hold a sham referendum in Kharkiv Oblast after most of it was liberated by Ukrainian forces in a lightning counter-offensive in early September.
Russia also retreated from the right (western) bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast in early November after it became untenable for Russian invasion forces. Ukrainian forces heavily damaged the bridges across the river, making it impossible to keep Russian forces properly supplied.
Ukrainian forces on Nov. 11 liberated the city of Kherson — the only regional center that invading Russian forces had managed to capture since launching their invasion of the country on Feb. 24, 2022.
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