Russia has added new conditions for a ceasefire to a litany of existing ones, prompting United States (US) president Donald Trump to threaten new sanctions against Russian oil.
Visiting Russia’s newest nuclear submarine, the Arkhangelsk, on 27 March, Russian president Vladimir Putin said a temporary administration should be installed in Ukraine to lead the country to elections.
Russian officials have been trying to discredit Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy since negotiations began in February, in an apparent effort to undermine Ukraine’s position.
For example, the Kremlin continued to accuse Ukraine of breaking a ceasefire on energy infrastructure, which Moscow proposed on 18 March and Kyiv has not agreed to.
Russian and Ukrainian technical teams have failed to nail down what would be protected under the deal.
Sergey Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister, told an interviewer on Tuesday that the US-led talks “leave no room for Russia’s core demand to address “the root causes of this conflict”, which officials in Moscow have defined as reversing the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) and the treatment of Russian minorities in Ukraine.
Photo: Contributed
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