Moscow Rejects Ukraine Proposal for UN-Mediated Peace Talks

Moscow's ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov (L), Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko (2L), presidential aide and the head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky (2R), and chairman of the Russian State Duma's international affairs committee Leonid Slutsky (R) speak to the media in Belarus' Brest region on March 7, 2022. (Maxim Guchek/Belta/AFP via Getty Images)

Russian officials have soundly rejected a proposal by Ukraine’s foreign minister to convene a peace summit between the two warring parties sometime in February.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, described the proposal—under which Russia would have to submit to a “war crimes tribunal”—as “a smokescreen.”

“Ukraine still isn’t ready to hold peace negotiations,” Slutsky was quoted as saying by Russia’s TASS news agency on Dec. 27.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba first aired the proposal in a Dec. 26 interview with The Associated Press.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba (R) at NATO headquarters in Brussels on April 7, 2022. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

In the interview, Kuleba floated the notion of holding a Ukraine–Russia “peace summit” within the next two months.

According to the proposal’s terms, the summit would be mediated by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who Kuleba described as an “efficient mediator and negotiator.”

“Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” Kyiv’s top diplomat said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

However, he went on to condition the talks on Russia being tried first by an international “war crimes tribunal.”

Russian delegates “can only be invited to [the summit] in this way,” Kuleba said.

On Dec. 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow’s willingness to engage in talks while accusing Kyiv of “refusing to negotiate.”

“We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions,” Putin said in a televised address, which some observers believe was aimed at Kyiv’s powerful Western allies.

“But that is up to them. We aren’t the ones refusing to negotiate—they are.”

Moscow, for its part, demands recognition of the Crimean Peninsula, which it formally annexed in 2014, as Russian territory.

It also demands recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, which were similarly annexed—following controversial referendums—in September.

Minsk Meeting Aftermath

A trip to Minsk, Belarus, last week by Putin, along with his ministers of defense and foreign affairs, has brought the position of neighboring Belarus into the spotlight.

During his one-day visit, Putin held lengthy closed-door discussions with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who’s a close ally of Moscow.

The meeting sparked fears in Kyiv that Belarus could be used as a staging ground for a potential Russian advance into northern Ukraine.

Ukraine shares a roughly 675-mile-long border with Belarus, and Kyiv is located 95 miles south of the border.

In October, Moscow dispatched thousands of troops—and large amounts of military hardware—to Belarusian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko walk during a meeting in Sochi, Russia, on May 23, 2022. (Sputnik/Ramil Sitdikov/Kremlin via Reuters)

Soon afterward, the Russian air force began staging regular patrol flights over the Belarusian border.

Speaking to TASS on Dec. 26, Dmitry Ryabikhin, a Belarusian defense official, said military cooperation between his country and Russia hadn’t changed “qualitatively or quantitatively.”

However, he noted that “certain vectors” of bilateral military cooperation had changed.

One day earlier, Minsk confirmed that Russian-deployed Iskander missile and S-400 air-defense systems were now up and running in Belarusian territory.

Like Ukraine, Belarus existed for decades as a “socialist republic” within the Soviet Union until the latter’s demise in 1991.

Since 1999, Russia and Belarus have been bound by a Union State Treaty aimed at bolstering economic and military ties between the two countries.

On Track to Join SCO

Despite its longstanding strategic partnership with Moscow, Belarus hasn’t played a role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, now in its 11th month.

Lukashenko has also repeatedly said he has no intention of sending Belarusian troops into Ukraine to fight alongside Russia.

Belarus is currently a member of several Russian-led regional blocs, including the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

It’s also on track to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a formidable bloc of Eurasian states led by Moscow and Beijing.

Speaking on Dec. 26, Ryabikhin stressed the “military component” of his country’s current dealings with SCO member states.

“It is crucial to speak about the SCO’s military component,” he said, noting that half of the world’s 10 largest armies–in terms of overall troop strength–were accounted for by SCO member states.

Along with Russia and China, the nine-member SCO also includes Pakistan and, most recently, Iran.

In September, Turkey declared its hope of eventually joining the regional bloc.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.