Kyiv rejects plans for negotiations: "Moscow has to pay high-enough price for war"

The Kyiv administration has rejected any prospects of engaging with Russia for discussions to resolve the ongoing conflict until Moscow fulfilled its obligations.

This condition was voiced by Mykhailo Podolyak, the Presidential Adviser to the Head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, Caliber.Az reports via Russian media, who stressed that Russia “has not been made to pay a sufficiently high price for this war." 

His comments came amid a surge in attacks on both sides and the potential for a peace deal, that seemed closer after the victory of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, starting to dwindle.

During his campaign trail throughout the US, Trump made promises of ending the Ukraine war within 24 hours of assuming office, in some instances even stating the war could come to an end before he enters the White House in January 2025. As Caliber.Az recalls, he slightly backslided on this promise, however, when he told a US magazine on December 12 that “the Middle East is an easier problem to handle than what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.” 

While the Trump administration has not shared any details of their proposal on the resolution of the conflict, Russian President Putin slammed the idea of a deferral of Ukraine’s accession to NATO by 10 to 15 years. “In terms of historical distances and timeframes, this [deferral] is a moment. What difference does it make to us – today, tomorrow, or in 10 years?” he asked, rhetorically, in response to a journalist’s question on this condition, which many experts believe is the key proposal around which the Trump proposal is built.

By Nazrin Sadigova