The Krem­lin said Fri­day that a draft Rus­sia-Ukraine agree­ment ne­go­ti­at­ed in 2022 could serve as a start­ing point for prospec­tive talks to end the fight­ing that has dragged in­to a third year.

Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said that the draft doc­u­ment that was dis­cussed in Is­tan­bul in March 2022 could be “the ba­sis for start­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions.” At the same time, he not­ed that the pos­si­ble fu­ture talks would need to take in­to ac­count the “new re­al­i­ties.”

“There have been many changes since then, new en­ti­ties have been in­clud­ed in our con­sti­tu­tion,” Peskov said in a con­fer­ence call with re­porters.

In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Rus­sia an­nexed four Ukrain­ian re­gions in a move that Kyiv and its West­ern al­lies have re­ject­ed as an un­law­ful.

Peskov’s state­ment fol­lowed Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s com­ments Thurs­day, in which he mocked prospec­tive Ukraine peace talks that Switzer­land is set to host in June, warn­ing that Moscow will not ac­cept any en­forced peace plans.

“We are ready for con­struc­tive work, but we wouldn’t ac­cept any at­tempts to en­force a po­si­tion that isn’t based on the re­al­i­ties,” Putin said dur­ing a meet­ing in Moscow with Be­laru­sian Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lukashenko, adding that the Is­tan­bul draft doc­u­ment could serve as a ba­sis for ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“We can work with it,” he said.

The doc­u­ment dis­cussed in Is­tan­bul weeks af­ter Rus­sia in­vad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022 re­port­ed­ly in­clud­ed pro­vi­sions for Ukraine’s neu­tral sta­tus and put lim­its on its armed forces. No deal was reached, and the ne­go­ti­a­tions col­lapsed soon af­ter that round of talks.

Rus­sia has dis­missed Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy’s peace for­mu­la which would re­quire Moscow to pull back its troops, pay com­pen­sa­tion to Ukraine and face an in­ter­na­tion­al tri­bunal for its ac­tion.

Putin has re­peat­ed­ly said that he sent troops in­to Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022 to pro­tect Russ­ian in­ter­ests and pre­vent Ukraine from pos­ing a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty threat to Rus­sia by join­ing NA­TO. Kyiv and its al­lies have de­nounced Rus­sia’s mil­i­tary cam­paign as an un­pro­voked act of ag­gres­sion.

Putin has vowed to ex­tend Moscow’s gains in Ukraine, claim­ing that Russ­ian forces have the up­per hand af­ter the fail­ure of Ukraine’s coun­terof­fen­sive and that Ukraine and the West will “soon­er or lat­er” have to ac­cept a set­tle­ment on Moscow’s terms. —MOSCOW (AP)

_______

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS