(Moscow) Relations between Moscow and the West are close to the “point of no return” against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and massive sanctions against Russia, the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy said on Friday.
Posted at 10:33 a.m.
Updated at 4:16 p.m.
“The fact is that we are close to where the point of no return begins,” Maria Zakharova told Russian television.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the Ukrainian military to “seize power” in Kyiv by overthrowing President Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage, minutes after hinting at negotiations with Kyiv.
“Take the power in your hands. It seems to me that it will be easier to negotiate between you and me,” Mr Putin told the Ukrainian army in an intervention broadcast on Russian television.
He said he was not fighting army units in Ukraine, but nationalist formations that behave “like terrorists” using civilians “like human shields”.
Mr. Putin also described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his ministers as a “clique of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, who settled in Kiev and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage”.
Moscow has called the Ukrainian authorities “neo-Nazis” or a “junta” since 2014 and the outbreak of war in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine between separatists and Kiev forces, despite Mr. Zelensky having Jewish origins.
The charges of “drug addict” refer to those launched by Mr. Zelensky’s detractors during the 2019 presidential election, in which he was comfortably elected.
A little earlier, the Kremlin had indicated in a press release that Mr. Putin had assured his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping “to be ready to send a delegation to Minsk for negotiations with representatives of Ukraine”.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia had been in contact with the Ukrainians for this purpose, but that they had “completely disappeared from the line” after a disagreement over the city ahead. host talks.
Ukraine has not raised this possibility.
Prior to the invasion, the Kremlin consistently refused talks with Ukraine, despite repeated requests from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of the Russian invasion on Thursday.
The Ukrainian president had even said a few hours before the start of the Russian military campaign that he had tried in vain to reach Mr. Putin.
On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov assured that the objective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to “liberate” the Ukrainians “from oppression”, suggesting that Moscow intended to overthrow the power in place.
He added that Russia was ready for negotiations if Ukraine “lays down its arms”.
Mr. Putin on Friday accused units of Ukrainian nationalists of acting “like terrorists” by deploying heavy weapons in the center of major Ukrainian cities including Kiev and Kharkiv (East).
“We consider this situation to be extremely dangerous,” Peskov said.