Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Friday that the Kremlin would likely have to come to the negotiating table to end the war it started in Ukraine — but claimed he’d been cheated in such negotiations before.
“Negotiations will have to be made,” the Kremlin chief said at a news conference in Kyrgyzstan, adding that he came to the assessment given “the realities that are taking shape on the ground.”
But Putin noted he’d been betrayed by the West following the Minsk agreements — the series of ceasefire agreements that ended Russia’s first aggressive foray into Ukraine beginning in 2014.
The Russian leader referenced a comment made by former German chancellor Angela Merkel this week in which she acknowledged to German newspaper Die Zeit that the Minsk agreements had been an effort to “give Ukraine time” to build up its defenses and become stronger.
Putin called the remark “disappointing,” according to Russian media outlet TASS.
“Frankly, I did not expect to hear this from the former Federal Chancellor,” he said.
“Now there is a question of trust, it is already almost at zero,” Putin continued. “I have said many times that we are ready for agreements, we are open, but this makes us think about who we are dealing with.”
Russian state media has framed Merkel’s quote as an admission that Ukraine is a front for Western aggression — omitting that the Minsk agreements were necessitated by Russian paramilitaries sent into Ukraine after popular protests forced Ukraine’s pro-Putin president Viktor Yanukovych from power.
Putin has previously said that Ukrainian neutrality and a commitment to demilitarization are prerequisites to a negotiated end to the conflict. Kyiv has rejected those terms, and demanded that Russia return all the Ukrainian territory it has claimed to annex — including the Crimean peninsula, which Russia claimed in the 2014 aggression that prompted the Minsk agreements.
His comments on Friday come as Russia continued its shelling of the front line in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Donetsk region’s governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said intense fighting was occurring near the eastern towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
“The entire front line is being shelled,” he said, noting that Russian forces were also trying to advance near Lyman, which had been taken back by Ukrainian troops in November.
With Post wires