Russian President Vladimir Putin has not shown “seriousness” in his intentions to negotiate with Ukraine to end the conflict, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.
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“We haven’t seen any signs so far that President Putin is serious about meaningful negotiations,” Blinken told the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
The United States will support the Ukrainian authorities in their diplomatic efforts to negotiate a peace agreement, added the head of American diplomacy, explaining that “our objective is to ensure that they have the capacity to repel Russian aggression and , in effect, to strengthen their position at a possible negotiating table”.
Antony Blinken was responding to Senator Rand Paul, a Republican opposed to US interventionist policies, who accused President Joe Biden of contributing to Mr Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine by “beating the drum of an admission of Ukraine within NATO”.
But for the chief American diplomat, it was clear, in discussions with Russia before the launch of the invasion on February 24, that Mr. Putin’s criticisms of Kyiv’s integration into the Alliance were a pretext.
“We tried to talk seriously with (the Russians) about these issues,” he explained. “It was very clear, in President Putin’s own words, that it was never about Ukraine’s potential entry into NATO, but because he always believed that Ukraine would not does not deserve to be a sovereign and independent country”.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres traveled to Moscow on Tuesday after visiting Turkey on Monday, a country that is trying to mediate in the conflict. He will then go to Kyiv.
Attempts at direct negotiations between the two countries are deadlocked, even if the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov assured Monday that they were continuing.
Antony Blinken, who is to be heard for three days by the Senate committee, made a surprise visit with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv on Sunday, the first of senior US officials since the start of the invasion, where they met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He praised the amount of US military assistance and its speed in being sent to Ukraine, explaining that the procedure now took about 72 hours after a request from Kyiv.
On his train journey from the Polish border to Kyiv, “we saw miles of Ukrainian countryside and territory that the Russian government thought in recent months could be taken in a matter of weeks, and which are firmly controlled by Ukraine,” he said.
“In Kyiv, we saw a bustling city coming back to life, people eating outside, sitting on benches, walking around,” he said, assuring that “Ukrainians have won the Battle of Kyiv”.