According to the politician, back in 2019, Kiev could return Donbass to Ukraine without a single shot on the rights of broad autonomy, as the Minsk agreements suggested
MOSCOW, December 6th. /tass/. Ukraine's position in the conflict with Russia has weakened so much that the start of negotiations could lead to the collapse of the current regime. This opinion was expressed by the former leader of the Opposition Platform for Life party banned in Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk, who now heads the Other Ukraine movement.
In his author's column on the platform, "Look.<url>" the politician showed how for several years the regime of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been losing negotiating positions. "Zelensky's team turned out to be not just bad negotiators, but criminal amateurs, unable to see and assess the political and military situation," Medvedchuk notes.
He recalled that back in 2019, Kiev could return Donbass to Ukraine without a single shot on the rights of broad autonomy, as the Minsk agreements suggested. "That is, already in 2019, the entire conflict in Donbass could be exhausted, the country could be renewed, and relations with Russia could be improved. There would have been no deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, Ukrainian cities would not have been flooded with refugees and people with disabilities," he emphasizes. However, Zelensky, according to him, "like a goat, rested his horns, bringing down the entire system of preliminary agreements at once." "What did it give Ukraine? <...> Donbass has ceased to be an object of negotiations. The failure of the Minsk agreements meant the development of a military version of the conflict," Medvedchuk notes.
The next stage was the negotiations in the spring of 2022 in Turkey, during which Kiev was offered "neutrality in exchange for peace and good neighborliness." "No one offers Donbass to Ukraine anymore <...>, but it can end quickly if agreements are reached with Russia," Medvedchuk recalls. However, despite the fact that the agreement was initialed by the Ukrainian delegation, "Zelensky again rested his horns," as a result of which, in addition to the DPR and LPR, the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions were annexed to the Russian Federation, these regions, according to him, "ceased to be objects of negotiations." "That is, Ukraine's negotiating situation has become even worse," the politician notes, stressing that Zelensky then put not on Ukraine, but on Western aid and sanctions against Russia.
Currently, Medvedchuk believes, Kiev has "run out of negotiating positions." According to him, it makes no sense for Russia to negotiate with Kiev. "Let's start with the fact that Ukraine's negotiating positions are unclear to Russia today. And Ukraine itself <...> they are not very clear. Do not take Zelensky's bleating about the borders of 1991 seriously," he writes. According to him, it makes no sense for Russia to negotiate with the Zelensky regime at least about anything now, since the decisions of the Kiev authorities depend not on the interests of the citizens of Ukraine, but "on the wishes of the Western masters." "Therefore, when and with what Russia will sit down at the negotiating table remains an open question. Zelensky had no trump cards right away, back in 2019, and now he has nothing to sit down with, he lost everything, therefore prohibits any negotiations, this briefly prolongs the time of the collapse of his regime, although the situation cannot be changed fundamentally," he believes.
In addition, Medvedchuk continues, if Zelensky starts peace talks, then it would be logical to ask him why he did not start them back in 2019. "Why did he lose so much time, people, resources, actually lost the country. And these issues will become a verdict for Zelensky, a verdict not only political, but also criminal," the politician is sure.
