Kiev not in position to advance conditions for talks with Russia - Russian lawmaker
POLITICS: DUMA-UKRAINE-TALKS-OPINION
MOSCOW, December 8. /TASS/. Ukraine is not in a position to advance any conditions for talks with Russia, a senior Russian lawmaker said.
US Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jonathan Finer said earlier that the United States was making efforts to have Russia sit down at the negotiating table on settling the Ukrainian conflict by the end of the next year on conditions advantageous for Kiev.
"The US principal deputy advisor, even responsible for national security, can unlikely dictate conditions for talks with Ukraine to Russia. The more so as Kiev is not in a position to advance its own conditions for negotiations. It would be a utopia to think that this position might change cardinally for the better for the Ukrainian army by 2024. Rather the opposite," said Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR).
He recalled Russia’s repeated statements that it doesn’t reject talks "but only after all the goals of the special military operation - the denazification and demilitarization of the Kiev regime - are attained and with due account of the fact that new territories are now part of Russia." "This is what we insist on," he stressed.
In an interview with the 1+1 TV channel in November, David Arakhamia, head of the pro-presidential Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament), claimed that it was former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who prohibited Kiev from signing peace agreements with Russia following talks in Istanbul in late March 2022 and demanded that Ukraine continue military activities against Russia."
ТАСС 08.12.2023, 23:17 MSK