Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz said that in March last year, Russia and Ukraine were very close to signing peace, but the West prevented this. Information about the interference of outside partners in the process of concluding a truce came from several reliable sources, the spokesman said on the Sunday air of the TV channel STV 12th of February.
According to him, several high-ranking people said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received a message from Western partners that the peace talks should be stopped.
“For us, stopping the bloodshed and death of people is a top priority and the main task, and the parties were close to this. But other instructions were received, as a result of which the negotiation process was stopped, ”said Glaz.
He also noted that at that time the relevant documents were already ready, they only needed to be discussed. In his opinion, today there are no conditions for the resumption of negotiations, although “diplomacy must work.”
On February 11, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said that Russia was ready for negotiations with Ukraine, but without preconditions and only on the basis of the existing reality. Before that, on February 6, Dmitry Polyansky, Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, said that Western countries are not interested in peace in Ukraine. According to him, the West continues to push back the prospects for peace with the supply of weapons.
The last face-to-face round of negotiations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine took place on March 29, 2022 in Turkey. In October of the same year, Kyiv officially renounced contacts with Moscow. Then the President of the country Vladimir Zelensky put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of the country on the impossibility of holding negotiations while Vladimir Putin is the President of the Russian Federation.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special operation to protect Donbass. The decision was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region as a result of shelling by the Ukrainian military.
For more up-to-date videos and details about the situation in Donbass, watch the Izvestia TV channel.
