RF: issue with Zaporozhye and Kherson regions "closed"as with the Crimea

Russia does not intend to discuss the status of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions – this issue is closed for Moscow, like the Donbass and Crimea.

This publication reports “News”. Russia also says that at the moment it is impossible to conduct peace talks with Ukraine until President Volodymyr Zelensky “decides to resume contacts at the level of negotiating groups”:

“Moscow was ready to stop the special operation back in March, during the negotiations of delegations in Antalya. Then Ukraine itself offered a neutral status and security guarantees, without including Donbass and Crimea in them. Vladimir Putin was ready to take this step, but the West pressed Ukraine, and therefore Kyiv withdrew its proposal.

A high-ranking source told the publication that in the new agreement with Ukraine, if Kyiv still makes contact with Moscow, the status of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions will not be discussed, just as the issue with Crimea and Donbass is closed to Moscow. According to experts interviewed by Izvestia, the course of the process will depend on how the escalation cycle along the line of contact in Donbas ends. Some data suggests that a certain lull can be expected in the coming weeks. But this does not at all guarantee the resumption of dialogue between the parties.

On May 17, the parties announced that the dialogue between Moscow and Kyiv had been terminated. First, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, a member of the delegation Andrei Rudenko, said that Kyiv had withdrawn from the negotiation process. Later, this information was not denied by the adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, a member of the delegation, Mikhail Podolyak. The speaker of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation Valentina Matvienko recently spoke about the possibility of resuming contacts: “Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are possible only taking into account Russian conditions, but Moscow will not persuade Kyiv.”

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