Everyone says they want peace, but only President Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has ruled so far in favor of an encounter in person with his rival. Vladimir Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, has eluded this Monday to answer kyiv’s proposal, day in which he had to start a 30 -day truce that Moscow has rejected. “Russia is determined to look for serious ways to fix the long -term Ukrainian conflict,” Peskov told reporters, although he has declined to answer whether the Russian leader will collect the Ukrainian glove and will go to the May 15 appointment in Istanbul.
Zelenski held a meeting last Saturday with the leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Poland. At that meeting they agreed to demand from Russia a high fire of 30 days from this Monday or would redouble their sanctions against Moscow. After the meeting, the leaders talked to Donald Trump, who joined the proposal, according to the version of the European leaders.
“It is unacceptable to talk with Russia with the language of the Ultimatum,” said Peskov. Putin’s spokesman has limited himself to repeating the same message as the Russian leader delivered at midnight from Saturday to Sunday. Putin disregarded the proposal of a truce and opposed a direct encounter between Russia and Ukraine this May 15 in Istanbul, the first from the spoiled conversations of Turkey in March and April 2022. The next day, Zelenski accepted the proposal, provided that the Kremlin second would first be a stop the fire without conditions. The Ukrainian head of state also challenged Putin to face face to face in Türkiye.
Putin’s goal with these fleeting negotiations and truce, such as that announced by Victory Day on the Nazis between May 7 and 10, is to convince Trump that Kremlin wishes peace, even if at all times repeat that it is under his conditions. The Russian leader has not moved so far an apex that any agreement must observe “the deep causes” of the conflict. That is, to address the initial objectives of Russia: make the West stop supporting Ukraine, disarm the country to have it at its mercy and implement an related government in kyiv, what Moscow calls as “desnazification.”
The war followed its course on Monday, without any sign that Russia assumes a high total fire. The threat of long -range bomb drones and the shot of ballistic missiles have affects Ukrainian cities away from the front.
A single voice with Europe
Ukraine is coordinating the strategy with its allies in Europe. Both kyiv and its largest European partners, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Poland maintain the same position on paper: any negotiation must be preceded by a high total fire for at least 30 days. Russia refuses to this and the foreign ministers of these four countries have dialogued this Monday in London on how to prepare the possible encounter between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey, as reported by the Polish exterior spokesman Pawel Wronski.
kyiv insists that the high temporal fire is essential to be able to talk with Moscow. This has reiterated this Monday at the RBC Andrii Yermak, head of the office of President Ukraine. Asked about whether it can only be interlocutor Putin, Yermak has replied that he must be: “Do you know someone else in Russia to make decisions at this level and be able to ensure its implementation? Obviously, he will delegate the preparatory and technical phases, but we know who will ultimately decide.”
Both the European Commission and other allied reference actors of Ukraine have insisted that Putin is playing to postpone the future negotiation process. On it plans the threat announced on Saturday the member countries of the so -called coalition of the volunteers, headed by the United Kingdom and France, which warned that if Russia did not accept the high fire, new “mass sanctions” would be imposed. The German government spokesman Stefan Cornelius has warned the Kremlin that if he does not order a truce since Monday, the EU and the United Kingdom will begin the process to increase economic penalties over Russia.
The leaders of that coalition of volunteers have assured that they act in coordination with the United States, but President Donald Trump has not publicly seconded this threat on the Kremlin. Despite the demands of members of his team, such as the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, that before opening negotiations we must agree on a fire, Trump has omitted him and wrote on Sunday in his social networks that what he wants is that Ukraine and Russia meet as soon as possible.
“The position of the president of the United States is known, which called the Ukraine part to participate immediately, without conditions, in the meeting we proposed,” Peskov emphasized in his appearance.
Win Trump
Both parties, the Ukraine-Europe and the Russian, are making decisions and modulating their speech to win the favor of Trump. It remains to be seen how the US president would assume a negative Putin to travel to Istanbul to meet with Zelenski, or even a Russian definitive negative to secondary a high fire of 30 days, although his strategy so far has been reconciled with the Russian autocrat.
Trump has briefly commented on these issues during a press conference on Monday at the White House: “One says that if the fire is high, the other says no, what I say is that they go to the meeting, it is already scheduled.” The president has assumed that Delegations of Ukraine and Russia will meet in Istanbul, and expect Putin and Zelenski to head them: “Thursday’s meeting between Russia and Ukraine is of great importance. I insisted that this meeting took place. I think good news of this will come out, I think the two leaders will be there.”
The US president added that he considers traveling to Istanbul in the event that the face between Putin and Zelenski occurs.
Moscow and kyiv fight a battle for their image against Washington and the rest of the world. The Kremlin had insisted until now that Zelenski did not want to negotiate because he allegedly prohibited any encounter with Putin from the autumn of 2022. The Ukraine presidency approved in September of that year a decree by which he prohibits by law any direct contact of a Ukrainian citizen with Putin. In Ukraine there is a debate about the need to revoke or not this decree. The Strana media ensures Monday that Zelenski’s office feeds that the presidency can authorize exceptions in the norm.
The cocaine bulus
This propaganda battle has also splashed European leaders. One of the most repeated foundation accusations against Zelenski by the Kremlin until now was that the Ukrainian leader consumes narcotics. This Sunday, the spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, published on her social networks a video without sharpness in which she accused the leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom of hiding “a spoon” and “a bag” of drugs before the cameras. “For the leaders of the European Union, this is normal,” said the representative of Russian diplomacy.
“Incredible images, it is as if the Almighty revealed all this disgusting Saturday to the world so that those who have eyes to see, see,” Zajárova added. However, the images in high resolution of the images reveal that the supposed “bag” with narcotics was a paper scarf. Given the massive diffusion of the bully, even the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has been forced to deny it through his social networks.
Poland, in addition, has accused this Monday of Russian espionage of having caused a fire in a shopping center in Marywilska in May 2024. In response, Warsaw has decreed the closure of the Russian consulate in Krakow. “Poland is opting for hostility and enmity towards us,” said Peskov after qualifying the Polish research of “Rusophobic.”
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