MOSCOW – A draft peace agreement that Russia and Ukraine negotiated in the early days of the conflict could serve as a starting point for talks to end the fighting, the Kremlin said on Friday, reviving a proposal that Ukraine rejected.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the draft document that was discussed in Istanbul in March 2022 could be “the basis for starting negotiations”. At the same time, he noted that possible future talks would need to take “new realities” into account.
“There have been many changes since then, new entities have been included in our constitution,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
In September 2022, Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions, in a move that Kiev and its Western allies rejected as illegal.
The document discussed in Istanbul weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 reportedly included provisions for Ukraine’s neutral status and placed limits on its armed forces, while also delaying negotiations on the status of Russian-occupied areas. . No agreement was reached and negotiations collapsed shortly after the round of talks.
Russia rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace formula, which would have required Moscow to withdraw its troops, pay compensation to Ukraine and face an international tribunal for its action.
Ukraine, for its part, has categorically rejected the possibility of negotiating with Russia at this stage of the conflict, especially without guarantees that Moscow will withdraw from the occupied areas that currently cover a fifth of the country. Ukraine and its allies believe that Russia is now seeking a ceasefire agreement in order to buy time and reinforce its forces to capture more territory.
On the domestic front, accepting negotiations with Russia would be deeply unpopular and a blow to national morale after more than two years of war and tens of thousands of war deaths. At the same time, Ukrainian forces are struggling to combat more powerful and better-resourced Russian armed forces as a new U.S. military aid package has been stuck in Congress.
So far, Ukrainian officials say they have faced no pressure from Western allies to negotiate with Russia.
Peskov’s statement followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments on Thursday in which he mocked possible peace talks in Ukraine that Switzerland is expected to host in June, warning that Moscow will not accept any forced peace plans. .
“We are ready for constructive work, but we would not accept any attempts to impose a position that is not based on reality,” Putin said during a meeting in Moscow with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, adding that the draft Istanbul document could serve basis for negotiations.
“We can work with that,” he said.
Putin has repeatedly said he sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022 to protect Russian interests and prevent Ukraine from posing a major threat to Russia’s security by joining NATO. Kiev and its allies denounced Russia’s military campaign as an unprovoked act of aggression.
Putin has vowed to prolong Moscow’s gains in Ukraine, claiming that Russian forces have the upper hand following the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and that Ukraine and the West will “sooner or later” have to accept a deal on Moscow’s terms. .
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War announced that the bodies of 99 Ukrainian soldiers were repatriated from Russia on Friday. Among them, 77 of those who returned fought in the Donetsk region, 20 in the Zaporizhzhia region and two in the Kharkiv region.
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