While Switzerland is proposing to organize a peace summit to find a solution to the war in Ukraine, Moscow is now reviving an old solution – garnished with further demands.
The Kremlin sees an agreement between Russia and Ukraine on a peace settlement that was negotiated shortly after the start of the war in 2022 but ultimately failed as a possible basis for a new solution.
The agreement negotiated in Istanbul at the time could serve as a basis for new negotiations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency on Friday.
“New territories are now enshrined in our constitution, which was not the case two years ago,” Peskov added.
The reason for the comments was the Swiss proposal for a peace conference, which is initially intended to mobilize more international support for Ukraine.
Talks with Moscow should only take place in a second step, which the Russian President plans to take Wladimir Putin has criticized.
At a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that Putin said it was clear that nothing could be decided without Moscow.
In late March 2022, about a month after Putin ordered the all-out invasion of Ukraine, negotiators from Ukraine and Russia reached a tentative deal to end hostilities at talks in Istanbul as it became apparent that Moscow’s planned conquest of Kiev would fail.
It later emerged that Ukraine had initially agreed to renounce NATO membership and remain neutral. However, the agreement was not implemented, due, among other things, to disagreements over territorial claims.
Russia started the war under the pretext of “liberating” the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were partly controlled by pro-Russian separatists, from Kiev’s control.
Russia has now declared these two regions, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, to be its own territory in the constitution, although it only partially controls them militarily.
The failure is also attributed to the revelation of atrocities committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians in Kiev suburbs such as Bukha. This made reconciliation impossible for Ukraine.
Russia’s stated conditions include maintaining territorial gains and transforming Ukraine into a demilitarized, neutral country that will not become a member of NATO.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.
Peskov declined to elaborate on Moscow’s territorial claims, saying it was too early to provide details on “theoretical negotiations.” There are still no signs that Ukraine is ready for talks, he added.
Meanwhile, officials said Friday that both warring parties exchanged the bodies of more than 120 dead soldiers.
Ukraine has received back 99 dead soldiers, the office responsible for prisoners of war in Kiev announced via Telegram on Friday.
77 of them were killed in the Donetsk region, 20 in the Zaporizhia region and two in the Kharkiv region, it said.
Russia, in turn, received 23 bodies of soldiers, the Russian news site RBK reported, citing Duma deputy Shamsail Saraliev.
Exact military casualty figures were generally kept secret by both sides. But last month Zelensky put his own team’s casualties at around 31,000 dead.
Western estimates put the death toll significantly higher.
U.S. estimates from mid-2023 put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed at around 70,000 and the number of Russian soldiers killed at 120,000.