Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday denounced “an aggravation of the situation” in eastern Ukraine and criticized Kiev for not wanting to sit down to negotiate with the separatist rebels who control Donetsk and Lugansk.
“All that Kiev has to do is sit down to negotiate with representatives of Donbas and agree on political, military, economic and humanitarian measures to end this conflict,” said Putin, who received his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, in Moscow on Friday. .
Putin has stated that this dialogue should arrive “the sooner the better”, but the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, has only been in favor of recovering the international negotiation formats, with the presence of Russia as well.
The Russian president has accused Kiev of failing to comply with the Minsk Agreements to end the conflict, lamenting, for example, that the Constitution has not been amended to grant a “special status” to the eastern regions or there has been no progress in calling local elections or in relation to the “amnesty”, reports the Sputnik agency.
Putin has suggested that, as a result of his actions, there is “an aggravation of the situation in Donbas.” In the past day, Ukrainian forces and rebel militias have blamed each other for dozens of ceasefire violations.
For his part, Lukahenko has taken the opportunity to come out in defense of his main ally, accusing Western governments of a “stupid” way of constantly raising alerts about an imminent Russian military invasion of Ukraine.
The Belarusian president has asserted that, “for the first time in decades”, Europe is on the brink of a conflict that could spread throughout the continent.
