Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said that he and his ministers are considering Russian demands for Ukrainian neutrality. Russian president Vladimir Putin earlier this month said that Ukraine could adopt models of neutrality that Sweden and Austria offer. Russia is adamant that Ukraine drop their objective to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
“This point of the negotiations is understandable to me and it is being discussed, it is being carefully studied,” Zelensky was quoted as saying by news agency AFP and independent Russian media outlets.
Zelensky while speaking to the Economist also said that the NATO camp was divided. He said there are some members who do not mind a long war because it will destabilise Russia and do not care that it comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives. He said that there was another camp of countries which wanted the war to end because their economies and citizens are suffering.
He further goes on to say that there is another group which recognises Russia’s violence and wants Ukraine to prevail. He added that there is one final group of embarrassed member-states since they are ‘offices of the Russian Federation in Europe’.
Russian and Ukrainian representatives will meet once more this week – either on Monday or Tuesday – and kick off a fresh round of discussions to halt a war which has led to more than a 1,000 civilian casualties and displaced more than 10 million. The military death toll is also expected to be higher with neither side offering a clear picture on the number of deaths.
The developments come after Russia said that its so-called ‘military operation’ in Ukraine will be focusing on eastern Ukraine. Some experts see it as Moscow’s scaling back of ambitions as Kyiv is yet to fall to the Russian army.
Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov wrote on Facebook that Russia could be seeking to divide in Korea-like fashion. He said that Russia will draw a line of separation between the occupied and unoccupied areas. “After a failure to capture Kyiv and remove Ukraine’s government, Putin is changing his main operational directions. These are south and east. It will be an attempt to set up South and North Koreas in Ukraine,” Budanov wrote, indicating that a quasi-state of occupied zones could be set up by Russia.
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