Photo: Sergei karpukhin/TASS/DPA/PICTURE ALLIANCE / Deutsche Welle
The chief Russian negotiator, Vladimir Medinski, warned today (30.03.2022) to Ukraine that the status of both the annexed Crimean peninsula and the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, whose independence was recognized by the Kremlin, are untouchable for Russia.
“I want to underline that the principled position of our country in relation to Crimea and Donbas remains unchanged,” Medinski said in a statement on public television.
It should be noted that the Ukrainian presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podoliak, explained last night that kyiv proposed to Moscow a period of fifteen years to negotiate the status of Crimea, annexed by Russia on 2014.
As for Donbas, Russian President Vladimir Putin had recognized three days before the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine the ind dependency of the popular republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
And precisely, the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigú, assured that now the Russian Army is will focus on the conquest of the entire Donbas.
Ukraine welcomes the negotiations
For his part, the president of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelenski, considered the fifth round of negotiations between the two sides held on Tuesday in Istanbul to be “positive”. “The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be guaranteed. There cannot and will not be any compromise on sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he pointed out.
On the sidelines, Medinski, who returned last night from Istanbul, highlighted that “yesterday, for the first time in many years, the kyiv authorities expressed their willingness to reach an agreement with Russia”.
That is to say , added that “Ukraine was ready to meet the main demands that Russia insisted on in recent years.”
ee // afp/reuters