Russia is pushing back on a proposal that Ukrainians would put the key terms of a Russia-Ukraine peace deal to a popular vote, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying on Tuesday that a referendum would hamstring the negotiations.
Peskov made the remarks to reporters on Tuesday when asked to comment on an idea put forward by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that any compromises in Russia-Ukraine talks should be put to a popular vote in Ukraine.
“The people will have to weigh in,” Zelensky said. Since some of the terms of a peace deal could be “historic” in significance, “we will come back to a referendum,” he added.
In the interview, Zelensky reiterated his willingness to forego plans for NATO membership but insisted on security guarantees for his country, including from NATO countries.
Ukraine wants firm and enforceable security guarantees to protect its territorial integrity. Kyiv is wary of the type of soft pledges that were supposed to protect its sovereignty that were made jointly by the United States, Great Britain, and Russia under the 1994 Budapest memorandum in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal.
Those pledges, which were not backed by a commitment to provide military support to Ukraine in case its sovereignty was violated, proved to be of little use when Russian forces first invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 and again on Feb. 24, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion.
A key Moscow demand is that Ukraine declare neutrality and not join any military alliances. Russia also wants to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine, demands understood to mean some kind of degrading of its military potential and relinquishing power by the government in Kyiv, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has called “neo-Nazis.”
Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed Putin’s “neo-Nazi” claims as pretexts for what they describe as an unjustified, illegal, and groundless war.
Russia also wants Kyiv to recognize the breakaway separatist-controlled regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states and for Ukraine to acknowledge Crimea as belonging to Russia.
Zelensky has in prior remarks expressed openness to discussing the status of the breakaway statelets and Crimea, though he has insisted that there would need to be arrangements in place to resolve the issue of Ukrainians living in those regions that don’t want to live under Russian control.
Russia and Ukraine have held several rounds of talks by way of video conferencing, but so far without any significant breakthroughs.
Zelensky said direct talks are now needed with his Russian counterpart “in any format” in order to understand the conditions for putting an end to hostilities.
The United Nations chief, meanwhile, has said his discussions with officials indicate “there is enough on the table to cease hostilities now” and seriously negotiate a Russia-Ukraine peace deal.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Tuesday that the war is “unwinnable,” and the only question is how many more lives will be lost and how many more cities like Mariupol will be destroyed before the conflict shifts away from the battlefield and onto the negotiating table.
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