Russia has always emphasized its readiness to negotiate Ukraine without any preconditions: Ambassador Albert Khorev

ISLAMABAD, Jan 15 (SABAH): Ambassador of Russia to Pakistan Albert Khorev has said that Russia has always emphasized its readiness to negotiate Ukraine without any preconditions. In turn, Ukraine legally forbade negotiating with the President of Russia, he said.

Albert Khorev in a statement issued on Monday said that, the Pakistani newspaper “The Express Tribune” published an article by the Ukrainian Ambassador Markiian Chuchuk entitled “POW Exchange: Just the Beginning of the Long Way to Peace”, which contains a whole set of groundless accusations against Russia. Let us examine these allegations in more detail.

First, Moscow is claimed guilty of freezing the prisoner-of-war exchange. This statement is not corroborated by any facts. Moreover, it is not clear what the author of the article relies on. Russia is doing its utmost to bring its servicemen back to their homeland, welcoming the assistance of third countries in organizing exchanges. Thus, several major swaps have been carried out with an active support from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye.

Second. The accusation of Russia having “deported Ukrainian children” is one of the cornerstones of the Western information campaign targeting our country. Let the facts speak for themselves. Millions of Ukrainian refugees, including several hundred thousand children, have fled from Russian-speaking regions to Russia to save their lives from the actions and repressions of the Ukrainian army. In addition, amid constant Ukrainian shelling, around two thousand children from orphanages, together with their staff, have been evacuated. Their whereabouts are not concealed, their names are known. In addition, Moscow has made it clear that children, who were evacuated to Russia without their parents, can be returned by them. Thus, once again Ukrainian officials are portraying the rescue of children as a “forced deportation”.

Furthermore, the Ukrainian Ambassador repeated the hackneyed thesis of Western propaganda that Russia was not “taking any sincere steps towards peace”. In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite. Russia has always emphasized its readiness to negotiate without any preconditions. In turn, Ukraine legally forbade negotiating with the President of Russia. The Kyiv regime, having no success on the battlefield, continues to make absurd and unacceptable demands for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Russian territories of Crimea, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as a precondition for negotiations.

But does such a fanatical stance to continue the conflict with dim prospects represent the will of the Ukrainian people? In December 2023, Mariana Bezugla, Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security Committee, conducted a Facebook poll, indicating that the majority of Ukrainian men are willing to renounce their citizenship to avoid mobilization. Or maybe there is another force behind such unwillingness to compromise? David Arahamiya, head of the ruling party faction in the Ukrainian parliament, who took part in the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in March 2022, revealed: “…they [Russia] really believed to the last moment that they could pressure us into neutrality…they were ready to end the war if we were to accept neutrality…and commit not to join NATO…”, “…when we came back from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all”. “Let’s just keep the war going”, he said.

Therefore, who is actually “not taking any sincere steps towards peace”? And does Zelensky’s so-called “Peace Formula”, proposed by the Ukrainian diplomat, provide a way for peace instead of escalation of the conflict?