Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country is willing to discuss the adoption of a neutral stance as part of a peace deal with Russia aimed at ending the war.<\/p>\n
While speaking to a group of independent Russian journalists on Sunday for the very first time since the war began on February 24, the President said: “Security guarantees and the neutral, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to accept this. This is the most important point,” CNN reported.<\/p>\n
Zelensky told the journalists that, “this was the first point of principle for the Russian Federation, as I recall. And as far as I remember, they started the war because of this”.<\/p>\n
Any agreement would have to be put to the Ukrainian people in a referendum, he said, while stressing his desire to reach a concrete peace agreement.<\/p>\n
“So this clause is a security guarantee clause for Ukraine. And since they say it’s for them (security guarantees) as well, it’s understandable to me, and it’s being discussed. It’s in-depth, but I’m interested in making sure it’s not just another piece of paper.<\/p>\n
“So we’re interested in having that paper turned into a serious treaty to be signed,” the President said.<\/p>\n
Zelenksy further reiterated that “the issues of Donbas and Crimea must be discussed and solved” during the negotiations.<\/p>\n
The President’s statement came after a member of Ukraine’s delegation at the negotiations confirmed that the next round of talks will take place in Turkey from Monday to Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Without mentioning the exact location of the talks, David Arakhamiya the decision was taken during a round of video talks between the two sides on Sunday, Ukrayinska Pravda reported.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Vladimir Medinskiy, a member of the Russian delegation, said the meeting will take place Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian and Russian delegations have held three rounds of negotiations in-person in Belarus since February 28, and the fourth one started on March 14 in a format of video conference, Xinhua news agency reported.<\/p>\n
The announcements were made a week after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had renewed his offer to bring the leaders of Russia and Ukraine together in his country for final decisions for a peace agreement.<\/p>\n
On March 25, Erdogan had said that Moscow and Kiev were close to an agreement on four issues — Ukraine’s accession to NATO; recognition of the Russian language as the second official language in Ukraine; demilitarisation; and collective security.<\/p>\n
But the Russian demands on the future status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region continue to be the most important disagreement in negotiations, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country is willing to discuss the adoption of a neutral stance as part of a peace deal with Russia aimed at ending the war. While speaking to a group of independent Russian journalists on Sunday for the very first time since the war began on February 24, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-main-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16077,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16071\/revisions\/16077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}