(Reuters)-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responded on Sunday to a proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin of quick direct talks aimed at putting an end to war, saying that kyiv was willing to speak, but only after Moscow accepted a ceasefire.
Putin made her proposal in a 1 hour 30 hour television statement (2230 GMT on Saturday) of the Kremlin who coincided with prospecting hours in the United States, where President Donald Trump pressed both parties to accept a truce of at least 30 days and stop the three year war.
Trump, who says he wants to remember the peacemaker and has repeatedly promised to end the war, called him “a potentially formidable day for Russia and Ukraine!”
However, Putin suggested that everything was a question for the talks he offered for Istanbul on Thursday May 15.
And a few minutes later, the main assistant of the Kremlin Yuri Ushakov told journalists that talks had to take into account both an abandoned peace agreement in 2022 and the current situation on the ground – a stenography for Kyiv accepting permanent neutrality in exchange for a security guarantee and accepting that Russia controls the expanses of Ukraine.
Putin sent the Armed Forces of Russia to Ukraine in February 2022, releasing a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sparked the most serious confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
With the Russian forces forward, the chief of the Kremlin has offered little or no concessions so far.
He proposed that what he said would be “direct negotiations without any prerequisite”, making no mention of the terms later exposed by Ushakov.
Putin said he had not excluded both parties by accepting in Turkey on “a few new trèvres, a new ceasefire”-but which would be the first step towards “sustainable” peace.
Zelenskiy said that it was “a positive sign that the Russians finally began to consider putting an end to war”, but that “the very first step in the end of all war is a cease-fire”.
“We expect Russia to confirm a ceasefire-full, sustainable and reliable-from tomorrow, May 12, and Ukraine is ready to meet,” he said.
Trump hopes that the “bloodbath” ends
For his part, Trump added, in his article on Truth Social: “Think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that will be saved because this endless end will end.”
Putin's proposal occurred a few hours after the major European powers demanded on Saturday in kyiv that Putin accepts an unconditional cease-fire of 30 days or faces new “massive” sanctions.
Putin rejected what he said was an attempt to have “ultimatums”, and his Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that the deep causes of the conflict must precede the discussions on a ceasefire.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Putin's proposal for discussions showed that he was looking for a way to follow, but was also trying to buy time.
“This is a first step but it is not enough,” Macron told journalists in Ukraine early Sunday. “An unconditional ceasefire is not preceded by negotiations.”
Putin said Russia had proposed several ceasefire, including a moratorium on the energy of strike energy facilities, a Easter truce and more recently a truce of 72 hours during the celebrations marking 80 years since Soviet victory during the Second World War.
None of these elements has been agreed between the two parties, and everyone accused the other of continuing to attack in force during the supposed truce periods.
“Our proposal, as we say, is on the table,” said Putin. “The decision now depends on the Ukrainian authorities and their” conservatives “, who are guided, it seems, by their personal political ambitions, not by the interests of their peoples.”
The Kremlin said that Erdogan told Putin during a call that he had “fully supported” Putin's proposal and was ready to organize talks in Istanbul.
Meanwhile, Russia has launched a drone attack on kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, injuring a person in the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital and damaging private houses, said Ukrainian officials.
Putin stuck in the conditions of Russia
Putin, whose forces control a fifth of Ukraine and advance, was held firm under its conditions to end the war despite Trump's public and private pressure and repeated warnings of the European powers.
Trump has publicly shown irritation on both sides. But more recently, since the signing of an agreement to share the product of Ukrainian mineral exploitation, it seemed more frustrated by Moscow.
His Ukrainian envoy, Keith Kellogg, published an article on social networks suggesting that this has remained the case: “As President Trump said on several occasions, stop the murder !! An unconditional ceasefire of 30 days first and, during that, goes to complete peace discussions. Not the opposite.”
In June 2024, Putin said that Ukraine should officially decrease its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entire territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow. Russia considers Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, now irrevocably part of its own territory.
On Sunday, Putin mentioned the 2022 recovery agreement later by Ushakov.
Under this project, a copy of which Reuters examined, Ukraine would have accepted permanent neutrality in exchange for international security guarantees of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: Great Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
“It was not Russia that interrupted negotiations in 2022. It's Kyiv,” said Putin.
Former American president Joe Biden, the leaders of Western Europe and Ukraine have thrown the invasion as an hung on the imperial style lands and have repeatedly promised to defeat the Russian forces.
Putin presents war as a moment of the watershed in Moscow's relations with the West, which, according to him, humiliated Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 by widening NATO and encroaching on what he considers the sphere of influence of Moscow, including Ukraine.
(Report by Marina Bobrova, Dmitry Antonov, Lidia Kelly, Anastasia Lychikova, Felix Light; Elizabeth Piper in kyiv and Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara; edition by Kevin Liffey)
