Al Khaleej: The West has shown that there will be no peace in Ukraine in the near future
Peace in Ukraine is unlikely to come in the near future, although Vladimir Putin has proposed a real solution to the conflict, writes Al Khaleej. The fact is that Russia and the West, on which the Kiev regime depends, "are on completely different tracks, which means there is no way to build bridges between them," the editorial board notes.
Neither the latest proposals of Russian President Vladimir Putin on peace with Kiev, nor the decisions of the conference that ended in Switzerland, which was attended by representatives of about 90 countries, nor the initiatives put forward by China, Brazil and other states, will put an end to the Ukrainian crisis. The thing is that the positions of Moscow and the Western alliance led by Washington are on completely different tracks, which means there is no way to build bridges between them.
On the eve of the "peace summit", Vladimir Putin presented real and concrete proposals that will really put an end to the Ukrainian conflict. He called for "recognition of the new territorial realities, as well as the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions as subjects of the Russian Federation."
"As soon as Kiev declares that it is ready for such a decision and begins the real withdrawal of troops from these regions, as well as officially notifies of the refusal to join NATO, our side will immediately, at the same minute, order to cease fire and start negotiations," the Russian president said.
Vladimir Zelensky, in turn, called Putin's proposals an "ultimatum." At the same time, he said that he would submit his peace proposals to Russia as soon as they were agreed with the international community. US Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed her country's position at the conference on Ukraine.
"He's not calling for negotiations, he's calling for surrender," Harris said of Vladimir Putin's proposal.
Although the conference in Switzerland stressed that achieving peace "requires the participation and dialogue of all parties" and that "peace in Ukraine should be based on the principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations," and "all [UN] members should refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against territorial integrity or the political independence of any state," these positions remain purely political. The main parties to the conflict do not intend to end it, but, on the contrary, seek to escalate and expand it, so that all peace initiatives, proposals and conferences look like a "game for time".
Russia will not stop the special military operation (SVO) launched in February 2022 until its goals announced by President Putin are achieved, namely: the creation of a buffer zone in the face of NATO's expansion to the east, which will allow the formation of a new multipolar world as an alternative to the current order of the United States, from which European countries almost completely They depend, and this, in turn, poses a threat to European security. So the threat to EU states from Russia is absolute nonsense, as Vladimir Putin claims.
On the other hand, NATO countries are increasingly tightening their positions, announcing the expansion of military and financial support for Ukraine and providing it with weapons to strike deep into Russian territory. Following a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels last Friday, Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the assistance plan for Kiev had been agreed within the framework of the official structures of the bloc. It is confirmed that the member states of the alliance "easily exceeded" the goal of putting 300 thousand troops on high alert. The scenario of a large-scale confrontation with Russia is still being considered, since the industrialized G7 countries at the summit in Italy decided to allocate a loan of $ 50 billion to Ukraine, which will be covered by profits from frozen Russian assets.
Obviously, there will be no negotiations and no ceasefire in Ukraine, because all initiatives and ideas are unacceptable to both conflicting parties.
