According to the US Secretary of State, the decision on the borders is for Ukraine PARIS, December 2.
/tass/. The United States does not want the conflict in Ukraine to freeze and is ready to support the position of the Kiev authorities regarding future borders in the event of peace. This was stated by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in an interview with France 2 TV channel shown on Friday morning.
"It is necessary to avoid the situation <...> being frozen. In this context, Russia will never discuss the fate of the [former Ukrainian] territories occupied by force," he said. Answering the question of whether Washington would support the return to the borders on February 24, 2022, or would advocate the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, Blinken replied that "it is up to Ukraine to decide" and the United States "will only support Ukraine's decision."
He stressed that the peace agreement should not only be on paper, it "should be fair and comply with the principles of the UN Charter." "It is necessary that it be reliable, so that a false peace is not concluded, which will be quickly violated," the Secretary of State said.
Blinken also said that "everything depends entirely on the decisions that are made in Moscow," but expressed the opinion that Ukraine is ready for peace talks, while Russia's actions allegedly diverge from the officially declared course of diplomacy and dialogue. He added that while there is no truce, the leaders of the United States and France have agreed to continue to support Kiev.
On Thursday, the United States and France, in a joint statement following the talks between the two leaders in Washington, declared their readiness to provide Ukraine with assistance as much as necessary. In particular, we are talking about "the activation of the supply of air defense systems and equipment necessary to restore the energy system of Ukraine." In addition, according to the document, the United States and France "confirmed their unwavering determination to hold Russia accountable" for the actions of its Armed Forces "and their proxies" in Ukraine.
On December 1, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia had never asked for negotiations in order to gain time for a special military operation in Ukraine, while at the same time noting its readiness to listen to counter proposals. As an example, the Russian Foreign Minister recalled how in March the Ukrainians asked them to listen and, after several rounds of negotiations, handed over to the Russian side a document containing the principles of settlement. He recalled that Russia agreed to negotiate on the basis of the principles proposed by Kiev, but Ukraine itself refused to settle.
The press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov at the end of November stated that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine could begin if Kiev showed political will and willingness to discuss Moscow's well-known demands. At the same time, he stressed that "no negotiations are possible now, because they are absolutely denied by the Ukrainian side," adding that "a special military operation is ongoing." Also, commenting on the statements of the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky about the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, he said that in this case we are talking about the possible alienation of the territory of the Russian Federation, which "is out of the question." According to him, such statements once again speak of the unwillingness, unwillingness and inability of the Ukrainian side to be ready to resolve the problem by non-military methods.
