For the president of Brazil, Russia cannot keep Ukraine’s territory, but Volodimir Zelensky “cannot want everything either.”
Ukraine “does not trade with its territories,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on Friday. she was a harsh response to the president of BrazilLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had stated on Thursday that kyiv should give up the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, to stop the war.
“There is no legal, political or moral reason to justify abandoning a single centimeter of Ukrainian territory,” the spokesman for Ukrainian diplomacy wrote on Facebook, who said, however, that he appreciates “the efforts of the Brazilian president to find a way to stop the aggression Russian”.
“Any mediation effort to restore peace in Ukraine must be based on respect for the full and entire sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations charter,” Nikolenko added.
Kiev mantiene his refusal to negotiate with Moscow without the prior withdrawal of Russian troops of its entire territory, including Crimea.
On Thursday, the Brazilian president had suggested that Ukraine cede the Crimean peninsula to Russia to facilitate an end to the war, and stated that Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky “cannot want everything.”
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin cannot keep the territory of Ukraine. Crimea may be discussed. But what he invaded again, he has to rethink. Zelenski cannot want it all either,” Lula said in a meeting with journalists in the Presidential Palace of Planalto, in Brasilia.
Mediation proposal
The Brazilian leader formulated at the end of January, shortly after taking office for the third time, a mediation proposal in the Ukraine conflict by a group of countries.
The president plans to present this project to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing next week, in a visit that was scheduled for the end of March but had to be postponed due to Lula suffering from pneumonia.
The Brazilian head of state said he is confident in the chances of success of this project, and hopes that the group of countries can be created upon his return from China.
Celso Amorim, Lula’s main advisor for international affairs, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 25 in the Russian capital, and they discussed the possibility of opening a peace negotiation with Ukraine.
“To say that the doors are open (for peace negotiations) would be an exaggeration, but to say that they are closed is not true either,” said Amorim, foreign minister during Lula’s first governments (2003-2010), after the meeting.
Russia has said on several occasions in recent days that peace talks are impossible in the current context, and has assured that it will maintain its military operation in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted on Friday that peace talks on Ukraine should be based on a “new world order” free from US domination.
From Ankara, Turkey, where he warned that Moscow could soon abandon the agreement on Ukrainian wheat without also making progress on the export of Russian products, Putin’s foreign minister, Lavrov, clarified that for Russia “negotiations cannot take place until that our interests are not taken into consideration”.
And he stressed that peace talks are only possible if they aim to establish “a new world order” that excludes US domination.
Source: agencies
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