Russia welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s statement that Kyiv is willing to negotiate over the war, but it is not yet clear to Moscow who it might be negotiating with, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy made the statement in a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump, which Trump made public on Tuesday.
“Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians,” Trump said in an address to Congress while quoting from the letter.
Asked how the Kremlin viewed this, spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: “Positively.”
But he added: “The question is who to sit down with. For now, the Ukrainian president is still legally prohibited from negotiating with the Russian side. So, overall, the approach is positive, but the nuances have not changed yet.”
Peskov was referring to a Zelenskyy decree in 2022 that ruled out negotiations with President Vladimir Putin.
Notwithstanding the fact that many issues are to be resolved even before the talks can start, if an immediate ceasefire is agreed to by both parties with no offensive action by either party being intrinsic to it, at least the daily count of body bags will stop.
Both parties to the conflict have suffered enormous losses, and continue to do say. The meeting between President Trump and President Zelenskyy at the White House belied all the promises it had held, and turned into a disaster, eventually. It led to other nations trying to evolve peace proposals. However, even if the situation can be retrieved now, at least some tangible success would be achieved.
Team BharatShakti
(With Inputs from Reuters)
