Russia delays nuclear arms talks with US, says State Department
Talks were set to begin in Egypt today on the New START...
After President Joe Biden said he would be willing to meet with Vladimir Putin, Russia claims that the West’s failure to recognize “new territory” that have been taken from Ukraine makes peace negotiations more difficult.
The Kremlin declared that it was willing to engage in talks, but not over the demand of the West to leave Ukraine.
At the end of September, without having any control over any of them, Russia erroneously annexed four areas of Ukraine.
It has lost more than half of the territory it captured nine months into its invasion.
President Biden told reporters on Thursday night that he was ready to meet the Russian leader “if in fact there is an interest in him deciding that he’s looking for a way to end the war”.
Standing beside him in the White House, France’s Emmanuel Macron made clear the two men had agreed they would never urge the Ukrainians to make a compromise “that will not be acceptable for them”.
Following months with little indication of interest in discussions, there appears to have been a flurry of diplomatic activity. In southern Ukraine, the Russian military was compelled to retreat while intensifying attacks on civilian facilities.
Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, spoke with Vladimir Putin on Friday for the first time since September. The German leader had pushed his counterpart to find a diplomatic solution that includes the removal of Russian forces from Ukraine “as quickly as feasible” during the hour-long call, according to Berlin.
The Kremlin said the German side had pushed for the call, and Mr. Putin had urged Berlin to “reconsider its approaches in the context of the Ukrainian events”.
President Putin had drawn attention to the “destructive line of Western states including Germany” and Kyiv completely rejected the idea of talks, the Kremlin added.
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier that Mr. Putin remained open to talks aimed “to ensure our interests”.
But Moscow was certainly not ready to accept US conditions: “What did President Biden say in fact? He said that negotiations are possible only after Putin leaves Ukraine.”
He claimed that the fact that the US does not recognize “new regions” in Ukraine hindered efforts to find a shared ground for dialogue.
President Putin recognized four Ukrainian districts as being a part of Russia at the end of September, but while Russian soldiers are occupying most of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, their assault of Donetsk has stopped, and they are struggling in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lamented that no meaningful offers of mediation had been made by European nations up until the Scholz-Putin talk on Friday.
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