[edit: Davos Press Conferences are now hidden from public view.]
Kuleba at Davos.
Kuleba: There are now no preconditions for entering peace negotiations, apart from Ukraine “feeling” that “they are held in good faith”. And “russia will only come forward to hold peace negotiations [no in good faith used in that phrasing] - if they are starting to lose, and are covering their losses, that I can promise you.”
Selenskyjs requirements for peace negotiations on May 7th (Chatham House speech):
Ukraine will only reenter peace talks with Russia if the Kremlin guarantees the restoration of preinvasion borders and returns thousands of Ukrainians who were forcefully evacuated to Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.
src: click
Selenskyjs requirements for peace negotiations on May 24th (the same World economic forum Kuleba is speaking at today):
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selensky insists on direct talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, he again rejected consultations through mediators. If Putin understood reality, there would be a chance to find a diplomatic way out of the conflict. The leadership in Moscow should withdraw its troops to the lines before it began its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Selenskyj demands. “This could be a first step towards talks.” Ukraine will fight until it has regained all its territory, he said.
src: click (APA/AFP)
I’m sure no media outlet will report any contradiction here.
Second point: In the press conference with Kuleba, he put a new spin on the “we need time to integrate the brainwashed people in the temporary occupied territories” messaging Selenskyj has put forward in the Zakaria inteview before, and spun it into “it will take time to find people who would be willing to live in regions next to russia again, which is why it is hard to gage how long a process of rebuilding Ukraine will take”.
Two aspects. First the areas currently occupied by russia are now extending into Ukraine past more than half of said border territory. Second “we need to find people who want to live there”, sounds much nicer, right?
Third point. Kuleba is now openly for other nations engaging in helpful diplomatic talks that could bring about the end of the war. It is just that “they cant impose “new lines of contact””, or “touch the territorial integrity of Ukraine, as a whole - at all”.
Apart from this being a perfect quagmire on its own, three days ago Politico published the following:
Poland’s president told Ukrainian lawmakers that “only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future,” in a speech that was the first in-person address by a foreign head of state at Ukraine’s parliament since the Russian invasion.
“Nothing about you without you,” Andrzej Duda told the assembly in Kyiv on Sunday, while slamming the “worrying voices” that have been calling on Ukraine to make concessions to end the war.
Duda received a standing ovation and photos posted on Twitter showed him embracing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Poland has welcomed around 3.5 million Ukrainian refugees and supports Ukraine’s bid to join the EU.
Duda’s comments came as Ukraine said it would refuse a cease-fire and will not give up territory to Russia. In an interview with Reuters, Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak said concessions would backfire and only encourage Russia to hit harder.
“The war will not stop [after any concessions]. It will just be put on pause for some time,” said the presidential adviser.
“After a while, with renewed intensity, the Russians will build up their weapons, manpower and work on their mistakes. … And they’ll start a new offensive, even more bloody and large-scale,” he said.
src: click
With this (pressure to not influence ukrainian decision making) being the cause both for the german governments position of “the Ukraine has to decide on its own, when it wants to contemplate ending the war”, as well as the same position featured in the UvdL speech in Davos yesterday.
Those are responses to that voiced need to not be influenced by outside pressures which now doesnt exist anymore according to Kuleba, as long as those outside pressures dont try to negotiate a new contact line, or touch the territorial integrity of the Ukraine.
Also the argument of the Ukrainian negotiator you might notice, calls for a severe deterioration of russian military capability (usually the phrase “so they cant contemplate a similar attack for at least 30 years” is used). Which coincidentally is the US position Nina Khrushcheva stated that she hears from US generals in private conversations, but not when they are speaking to media.
Now wait to read none of this in tomorrows newspaper. Because they are our heroes.
Speaking of the usual heroes, just for reference, here is Kissingers Position from two days ago: click
And here is the ukrainian response.
But dont worry, that was just another old guy responding who was brought up on the notion, that Nato expansion was a threat.
edit: Short aside on italys peace talks initiative being rejected by russia.
Italys peace initiative in broad outlines: click
Russia pulls diplomatic corps from italy: click
Reuters reports the russian foreign ministry spokeswoman stating that the italian peace plan for Ukraine was a “fantasy”.
“If they hope that the Russian Federation will seize on any Western plan, then they haven’t understood much.”
So the russians aren’t exactly interested in peace negotiations either.
Kulebas position on the italian peace plan in Davos can be found in the video at 28min in. And it actually was what prompted Kuleba to go into laying out “his new rules for peace negotiations, facilitated by other countries”. Prefacing that with “Luigi Di Maio is a friend, so in principal I will not have anything against [something] proposed by a friend”.
In totally unrelated news, german president Frank-Walter Steinmeier was quoted saying the following yesterday:
German President to Putin: “Withdraw your troops!”
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw from Ukraine immediately at the Katholikentag in Stuttgart. “Respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, stop the fighting,” Steinmeier appealed at the opening ceremony of the church festival on Wednesday evening.
src: click
