Polish president urges to force Putin to seek dialogue with West

Polish President Andrzej Duda has said that it is possible to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“However, the Russian president, rather than the West, should initiate such negotiations,” President Duda said during a meeting with Polish diplomats in Warsaw, according to the Ukrainian "European Pravda" online media outlet.

“We do not mean to refuse from talking to President Putin. The Russian leader should express willingness to talk. European leaders should not ask the aggressor to talk. It is necessary to subdue Russia and help Ukraine for Putin himself to ask for holding a conversation,” the Polish president said.

He also added that sanctions against Russia should be valid until Ukraine says that they can be lifted, and the West should realise that doing business with Moscow as before is impossible.

“It is a shame to hear that Russia should not be humiliated and that it is necessary to allow it to keep its prestige. Russia has attacked and is killing, no one has attacked Russia. Russia's stories of NATO threats amid assassinations in London for several decades, wars in Ukraine, and previous wars in Georgia and Syria are disgusting propaganda. Russia is responsible for this war, and it will be responsible for the famine which may occur in the world due to the inability to supply grain from Ukraine to Africa and other parts of the world,” President Duda stressed.

He also added that "Moscow should pay a high price for its Great Russian politics".

French President Emmanuel Macron previously explained that his phone talks with President Putin were often held at Kyiv’s request, however, more often he phoned on his own initiative.

In turn, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed that it is “absolutely necessary” to talk to the Russian leader amid the war in Ukraine.

Scholz and Macron have been criticised very often for their phone talks with President Putin during the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that conversations with the Russian leader have no sense.