Shortly before, the last more than 2,400 Ukrainian defenders of the port city in the south-east of the country surrendered and were taken prisoner by the Russians.
Zelenskyy stressed that Kiev will have everything back. A return to the front lines before February 24 – the day Russia’s war of aggression began – will already count as a victory. “It will mean that they didn’t conquer us and we defend our country,” said the head of state. But getting there will be very difficult. In the end, there is diplomacy.
According to Zelenskyy, the war in Ukraine can only end through diplomacy. The war will be “bloody, there will be fierce fighting, but it will only end definitively through diplomacy,” the head of state told Ukrainian television station ICTV on Saturday. “There are things we can only achieve at the negotiating table.” The results of the negotiations must be “fair” for Ukraine.
According to Zelensky, there should be a document on security guarantees for Ukraine, signed “by Ukraine’s friends and partners, without Russia”. At the same time, there must be “a bilateral discussion with Russia”.
Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in late February, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators initially met regularly for negotiations or discussed a solution to the conflict via videoconference. According to Russian news agencies, the last meeting of the two countries’ top negotiators took place on April 22 – a month ago.
Russia blames Ukraine for the impasse. “Negotiations are really not progressing and we note that Ukrainian negotiators are unwilling to continue this process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow on Wednesday. Earlier, Ukraine said the talks had been suspended because of Russia’s stance. Moscow does not understand “what is currently happening in the world and its extremely negative role,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolak.
According to its foreign minister, Italy has developed a plan for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine war. “We now need a diplomatic counter-offensive”, said Luigi Di Maio in an interview with the newspaper “La Stampa” (Saturday). The 35-year-old criticized that only individual states were currently trying to mediate. Now they want all relevant international organizations to cooperate. A first objective is to achieve local pauses in the fighting, followed by a ceasefire, work towards neutrality and, finally, a peace agreement.
The plan was developed by diplomats and the Italian government and presented to negotiators from the seven most important industrialized nations (G7), Di Maio said. He also spoke with UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The UN, EU and OSCE should involve other countries such as Turkey and India as the main working group.
However, Di Maio was a little pessimistic about the current situation in negotiations with Russia: “I don’t want to sound like an apocalyptic, but I don’t see negotiations at any table”, he said. “Individual actions will not convince Vladimir Putin to negotiate.”
The populist Five Star Movement politician saw another problem with the issue of grain deliveries from Ukraine, which is a major exporting country. “All the studies show that there is only one way to survive the grain and wheat shortage: create a protected corridor to allow the transport of grain by sea from the Ukrainian coast,” explained Di Maio. It is very difficult on land. “If Russia continues to block access to the sea, it will be responsible for new wars,” he said.