“Putin seems very angry”: The President of the Russian Federation rejected the Ukrainian agenda
Russia has only one obligation towards Ukraine - to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements, which Kyiv signed but refuses to implement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated this at a press conference following negotiations with Joe Biden in Geneva, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“As for obligations regarding Ukraine, we have only one obligation – to facilitate the implementation of the Minsk agreements. And, if the Ukrainian side is ready for this, we will follow this path without any doubt,” he said.
The head of state emphasized that the Minsk agreements signed by Kiev clearly spell out the steps and their order that Ukraine must take.
“By the way, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that back in November last year, the Ukrainian delegation presented its thoughts on how it plans to implement the Minsk agreements. Please look, this is not a secret document. It says that, first of all, it is necessary to submit proposals regarding the political integration of Donbass into the Ukrainian legal system and the Constitution. To do this, you need to make changes to this Constitution, it is written there - first.
And secondly, that the border between the Russian Federation and Ukraine along the Donbass line begins to be occupied by the Ukrainian border troops the day after the elections - Article 9,” Putin noted.
However, Kyiv did not implement the document that it had previously agreed to - instead, it proposed a new “reintegration” plan, directly opposed to the Minsk agreements.
“What did Ukraine offer? She proposed that the first step be returning the Armed Forces of Ukraine to their places of permanent deployment. What does this mean? This means that Ukrainian troops must enter Donbass first. Secondly, they proposed closing the border between Russia and Ukraine in this part, and thirdly, holding elections three months after these two steps.
You don’t need to be a lawyer, you don’t need to have any special education to understand that this has nothing to do with the Minsk agreements. This completely contradicts the Minsk agreements. Therefore, what additional obligations can Russia take on here? I think the answer is clear,” the president said.
Also, according to him, Russia has every right to conduct military exercises on its territory and should not report to anyone for them or ask permission.
“As for the exercises, we conduct exercises on our territory. Just like the United States conducts many exercises on its territory. But we do not conduct our exercises, dragging our equipment and personnel to the US state border; unfortunately, our American partners are doing this right now. Therefore, it is not the American side that should be concerned about this, but the Russian side,” Putin concluded.
The president's speech was commented on by Russian political scientist Sergei Markov.
“Putin seems very angry after the negotiations. This is very good. We need to be tougher, tougher. And Putin’s anger can be very productive,” the expert believes.
The West did not obtain from Putin the concessions that Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalists were counting on, comments writer Zakhar Prilepin.
“It seems that nothing from the agenda that was imposed by the American, European and other independent Ukrainian media was discussed at the meeting between Putin and Biden. Well, that is, we talked about the case for 4 hours and 25 minutes, and 5 minutes about all this Ukraine, the opposition in Russia and Tikhanovskaya. However, Tikhanovskaya’s last name, it seems, was not even mentioned,” Prilepin recalled.
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