Moscow has long said that it’s ready to work towards a diplomatic solution, provided its security concerns are addressed
Vladimir Zelensky has rejected the idea of ending the Ukraine conflict with a North and South Korea-style split, and stressed that there may be no final peace agreement signed with Russia.
At a press conference on Friday, he was asked whether he was considering a Korean War-style scenario for ending the Ukraine conflict. North and South Korea ended active hostilities with an armistice in 1953, but never signed a peace treaty, leaving the two nations de facto at war.
“No one is considering the ‘Korean’, ‘Finnish,’ or any other model,” Zelensky told journalists, according to UNIAN. “A ceasefire is enough to provide security guarantees. We can’t waste time waiting for a clear agreement to end the war. We need security guarantees beforehand.”
It may happen that there will be no final document to end the war.
Zelensky noted that French President Emmanuel Macron had argued security guarantees should not wait until the war is over. “I agree with him that, for instance, a ceasefire is enough to provide security guarantees,” he said.
Macron has increasingly lobbied to deploy “peacekeeping” troops to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire as part of Western Europe’s “coalition of the willing.”
Moscow has categorically rejected any scenario involving NATO countries’ troops being sent to Ukraine.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Ukraine and its European backers are “doing everything possible to continue down the path of confrontation and escalating tensions.”
Despite this, Russian President Vladimir Putin remains both “ready and willing to seek a diplomatic settlement” to the Ukraine conflict, Peskov said on Friday.
Earlier this month, Putin said that Moscow will observe any security guarantees agreed on with Ukraine, but insists that they “be drafted both for Russia and Ukraine.”
Moscow has repeatedly said that it sees NATO’s eastward spread, as well as Ukraine’s ambitions to join the US-led military bloc as threats to Russian security.
