Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will be illegitimate without the cancellation of the decree previously signed by Vladimir Zelensky banning them, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin.
‘If we start negotiating now, they will be illegitimate. There is, it is true, I did not talk about it, a problem here. Why? Because when the current head of the regime, that’s the only way you can call him today, signed this decree, he was a relatively legitimate president. And now he can’t revoke it because it’s illegitimate. That’s the trick, the ambush, the trap,’ said Vladimir Putin.
He also emphasised that immediately after the conflict began, Moscow offered Kiev to ‘withdraw’ from the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in order to stop the fighting.
‘Initially we told the Ukrainian leadership at the time: ‘People in the LPR and DPR do not want to be part of Ukraine, leave there, and that’s it, everything will end there, no hostilities, no war.’ No, ‘we will fight.’ <…> Nevertheless, they immediately agreed to the negotiations,’ the head of state said.
Vladimir Putin added that ‘Ukraine’s sovereignty is almost nil,’ as without financial and military aid ‘they will not exist for a month.’
‘They can’t exist, they won’t exist for a month if the money and, broadly speaking, ammunition stops. That’s it! Everything will be over in a month and a half, two months,’ the president said.
In the interview, he referred to the West’s influence on the Ukrainian conflict by the fact that they ‘persuaded the Ukrainians to continue the war.’
‘Suddenly, information came from Kiev that they need to consult with their allies and they are taking a week’s pause. <…> Here, they consulted. As you know, Mr Johnson arrived then – the British Prime Minister – probably at the suggestion of the former US administration headed by Mr Biden and persuaded the Ukrainians to continue the war,’ Vladimir Putin concluded.
We shall remind you that earlier the British newspaper Independent wrote that Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded that US President Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine take part in the peace talks.
