‘No schemes involving a freeze of the conflict will suit Russia’ — Russian ambassador to the U.N. on prospects for peace talks with Ukraine

Meduza.io

Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vasily Nebenzya said Moscow would not accept proposals to freeze the war in Ukraine.

“No schemes involving a freeze of the conflict will suit Russia,” Nebenzya said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on the war, as quoted by the Russian mission’s Telegram channel. He argued that the purpose of “freezing the conflict” is to “give the Kyiv regime a much-needed breather on the battlefield to rearm and ‘lick its wounds.’”

Nebenzya ruled out any role for NATO in resolving the conflict, saying, “The Alliance and Ukraine’s prospects for joining it have been part of the problem from the very beginning, not part of the solution.”

Russia’s terms for ending the war, he added, are “clear and logical” and have “nothing in common” with the proposals put forward by Ukraine’s Western allies, which he said fail to address the threat Moscow claims Kyiv poses.

According to Nebenzya, Russia’s conditions include the “the recognition of new territorial realities — the status of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics,’ and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as subjects of the Russian Federation,” as well as Ukraine’s “neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear status” and its “demilitarization.”

The statement referenced similar remarks made by Vladimir Putin in June, when the Russian president demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, Ukraine’s renunciation of NATO membership plans, and the lifting of Western sanctions on Russia.