– Is Russia genuinely seeking peaceful settlement, or is all of that just playing for time in order to adjust the military strategy by redeploying troops or mobilising supplies to the line of contact?
– Russia has always been and remains open to a political and diplomatic settlement in Ukraine. However, it must bring durable peace, not a mere ceasefire. We do not need a pause that the Kiev regime and its foreign handlers will use to regroup forces, continue mobilisation, and re-build their military capability.
Sustainable solution cannot be achieved without eliminating the underlying causes of the conflict. It is crucial to remove threats to Russia’s security caused by NATO expansion and dragging Ukraine into this military bloc. It is no less important to ensure human rights in the territories that remain under control of the Kiev regime, which since 2014 has been destroying everything that is related to Russia, Russians, or Russian-speaking people, including the Russian language, culture, traditions, canonical Orthodox Christianity, and Russian-language media.
There must be international legal recognition of the new territorial realities arising from the inclusion of Crimea, Sevastopol, and Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into Russia. These people decided on their future by freely expressing their will during the referendum. Our agenda includes demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine, lifting sanctions on Russia, rescinding all lawsuits against Russia, and returning the illegally seized Western-based assets.
These provisions must be included in a legally binding agreement for peaceful settlement. Ukraine should return to the origins of its statehood and adhere to the spirit and letter of the instruments that formed its legal basis. As a reminder, the provision on Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, and nuclear-free status is enshrined in the 1990 Declaration of its state sovereignty. In August 1991, the Verkhovnaya Rada adopted the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, reaffirming the inviolability of the provisions of this Declaration. Reference to the Act of Declaration of Independence is included in the preamble of the applicable Constitution of Ukraine.