Russia cannot sign security guarantees for Ukraine without resolving the territorial issue of Crimea and Donbass.
According to Censor.NЕТ with reference to Іnterfax-Ukraine, this was announced by the President of aggressor country Putin.
“We managed to achieve quite a serious breakthrough at the negotiations in Istanbul, because our Ukrainian colleagues did not link the demands of Ukraine’s international security with such a notion as internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, leaving out Crimea, Sevastopol and the Donbass republics recognized by Russia with certain reservations,” he said.
Unfortunately, Putin added, after reaching these agreements, Russia faced a “provocation” in Bucha, which he claimed “the Russian army had no relation to”.
“We know who did it. And the position of our negotiators with Ukraine regarding a further settlement changed radically after that. They moved away from their previous intentions to take the issues of security guarantees (problems) of the territories of Crimea, Sevastopol, and the republics of Donbass out of the equation. In their draft agreement on this issue, which was presented to us, they simply pointed out in two articles that these issues should be resolved at a meeting of heads of state,” Putin said.
“It is clear to us that if we take these issues to the level of heads of state without resolving them beforehand, at least within the framework of the draft agreement, they will never be resolved. In this case, we simply cannot sign under security guarantees without resolving the territorial issue of Crimea, Sevastopol, and the Donbass republics,” he added.
