Expert says Putin unlikely to ever seek peace deal with Ukraine
Russia is attacking Ukraine with increasing force, and since Russian leader Vladimir Putin assumes that Russia can endure longer, it is not particularly likely that he will ever seek to conclude a peace agreement with Ukraine, says Kristi Raik, director of the International Center for Defense and Security (ICDS).
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has blamed the United States for prolonging the war in Ukraine by a year, alleging that Washington's withdrawal from the so-called Anchorage agreements, reached between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, prevented the conflict from ending. Lavrov claimed that if the Americans had not backed away from the agreements and Europe had not "pulled" the U.S. away from them, there would have been no war for the past year.
The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected a ceasefire and demanded that Kyiv cede the strategically important Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, while Kyiv has called for a ceasefire along the current front line and security guarantees to deter future Russian aggression. President Volodymyr Zelensky plans to discuss possible limited ceasefires with Trump during a potential meeting in New York next week.
Brief written by urgent.news from Kyiv Independent's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
This story
This is one outlet's version. Read the fullest account.
