Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday he wanted to “continue working together” with Westerners on European security to defuse the crisis around Ukraine.
“We are ready to continue working together. We are ready to go on the path of negotiation,” he declared in Moscow during a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
However, he once again regretted the rejection by the West of his main demands, deploring not having received “unfortunately a constructive response” to them.
These demands are an end to the Alliance’s enlargement policy, a commitment not to deploy offensive weapons near Russian territory and the withdrawal of NATO infrastructure from the 1997 borders, before the organization does not host former members of the Soviet bloc.
“Le Devoir” in Ukraine
The Russian president also stressed that he was not giving up on these demands and that they would be part of the “complex” of the Russian-Western talks.
“Do we want (a war) or not? Of course not. This is why we have put forward our proposals for a negotiation process,” he said.
Mr. Putin also confirmed a “partial withdrawal of the military” from the border with Ukraine, however refusing to comment on it.
He also said that he “cannot turn a blind eye to the way the United States and NATO deal with the principle of the indivisibility of security”, Moscow judging that the West is trying to strengthen its own security at the expense of that of Russia.
Among the advanced themes on which the Western proposals agree with those of the Russians, there is that of a control of short and medium range armaments.
Regarding the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where the peace process has been stalled for more than two years while Franco-German mediators are trying to revive it, MM. Scholz and Putin again insisted on their commitment to the 2015 Minsk agreements.
But the Russian president again accused the Ukrainian government of “genocide” of the populations in the separatist regions, without specifying these accusations already made last year.
Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of blocking the peace process.