While the efforts to bring Moscow and Kiev to direct confrontation, Reuters publishes the requests of the Kremlin to end the conflict. With different surprises
After the repeated statements refusal, arrived from the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovregarding the deployment of western troops in Ukraine, here are the peace conditions of the Kremlin finally seem to outline in their entirety. To account is the press agency Reuterswhich cites anonymous Russian officials.
In essence, Vladimir Putin would have softened his territorial requeststhe summer of last year, when the Russian president asked for the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from all four regions partially occupied by Moscow (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zhaporozia). Now the Russian leader is limited to requesting the withdrawal of Kiev’s troops from Donbassor on the side of the Donetsk region still controlled by the Ukrainian army; In return, The Kremlin would be willing to withdraw its troops from the parts of the territory occupied in other regions of Ukraine (Kharkov, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk). In the end, this would be the “exchange of territories” to which the American president Trump referred both in the Summit in Alaska with Putin and in that of Washington with Zelensky and European leaders.
No at the entrance to NATO
If the Russian position on the territories has therefore softened, so it is not as regards the entry of Kiev into the Atlantic alliance. Putin is in fact maintaining his previous requests regarding the formal prohibition for Kiev to join NATO. And the desire that The military alliance led by the United States is legally undertaken not to expand further to the east. A legal constraint that Washington will hardly accept.
In the end, Moscow would like to limit the Ukrainian army and guarantee (also legally here) that no western soldier will be deployed in the Ukrainian territory as part of a peace forceaccording to reports from the sources. Yesterday Lavrov reiterated that Russia judges “absolutely unacceptable” the possible deployment of European troops in Ukraine, who perorate from the United Kingdom, Germany and above all by the French president Emmanuel Macron. A way to “try to attract attention to itself”, according to the head of Russian diplomacy, which cannot be accepted not only by Moscow, but by “all the political forces of common sense in Europe”.
Two weeks of time
The Kremlin, Lavrov underlined, supports the option for security guarantees At Ukraine discussed in the Istanbul negotiations in 2022, when the role of the permanent members of the UN Security Council and other countries was hypothesized, a hypothesis rejected by Kiev. Perhaps a solution could be the proposal of the Italian premier Giorgia Meloniwhich consists of Provide guarantees to Kiev style «Article 5“ of NATO, without however deploying troops on the territory.
The diplomatic match remains open, but will not be so indefinitely, as stated by the American president Donald Trumpaccording to which you can continue waiting for “two weeks, after which perhaps we will have to change tactics”.
