Speaking at a secret Yalta Economic Strategy forum in Kyiv, held on 9-10 September, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy rejected calls for peace talks with Russia, European Pravda reported.
“We cannot afford to stop. This is my main signal to all those who are out there with ideas, some of them even leaders, pushing us somewhere into someone’s unwanted arms. No. We cannot afford to stop! Until the moment when we feel that the victory has taken place,” he said, as if addressing someone in the room.
Zelenskyy, explained that it makes no sense to negotiate with Russia now, because it will violate any agreements. However, he said they might be possible in the future if Russia acknowledges its crimes in Ukraine, leaves the occupied territories and changes its status to “simply” Ukraine’s enemy.
While the officials still insisting on talks with Russia were not named, European Pravda’s sources said US President Biden, whose message was brought to Kyiv by State Secretary Blinken on a recent visit, was the target.
“It seems that this message was not an ultimatum or a demand, but a recommendation. The fact that there is no real pressure on Kyiv is also evidenced by the speech at YES by Victoria Nuland, who was also in Kyiv with Blinken. She only mildly said that ‘all wars end in peace agreements’ and stressed that the time of negotiations with Russia will be chosen by Ukraine itself,” European Pravda wrote.
However, this was enough to evoke a strong response from Kyiv.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Reznikov, who closed the two-day conference, also strongly rejected the proposal.
“We (during the war) learned a lot, including learning not to trust any talks about peace offered to us by our partners,” he said, without specifying which of the partners he was talking about.
Reznikov said that while during talks on the grain deal in Istanbul, Ukraine’s demands towards Russia were to withdraw to pre-24 February positions, now Ukraine’s position has changed: only Russia’s full deoccupation of Donbas and Crimea can be a precondition for entering negotiations.
No other guests at the forum supported the idea that Ukraine should negotiate with Russia.
The Yalta Economic Strategy Forum was originally held in Crimea, but after Russia’s 2014 occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula, moved to Kyiv. This year, it was held in the conditions of secrecy for security reasons.
