The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, assured his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that his government is willing to face a peace dialogue with Ukraine, as long as kyiv recognizes “the new territorial realities” that, he affirms, it has thrown up to now the war between the two former Soviet republics.
“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed Turkish mediation to find a political solution to the conflict, Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Russia’s openness to a serious dialogueprovided that the kyiv authorities comply with the known and repeatedly expressed demands, and take into account the new territorial realities,” announced a statement from the Kremlin released this Thursday and picked up by the Sputnik and AFP agencies.
The official text became known after Putin spoke by telephone with Erdogan, who urged to apply a “unilateral ceasefire” in Ukraine, reported the Turkish Presidency.
“Calls for peace and negotiations between Moscow and kyiv would have to be backed by a unilateral ceasefire,” the Turkish head of state told Putin.
When mentioning the “new territorial realities”, Putin is referring to the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Saporiyia and Kherson, where his troops carried out partial occupations that allowed them to establish governmentsalthough in all four there are areas where the domain of the Ukrainian authorities remains.
Moscow claimed last September the annexation of these territories, a policy that it already carried out with the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in March 2014.
The four provinces declared themselves to belong to Russia after calling plebiscites in which this option obtained absolute majoritiesbut this definition is not recognized by Ukraine or by the international community, who reject the preparation of these consultations and, above all, the conditions in which the scrutinies were carried out.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refuses to negotiate with Moscow while Putin is in power and insists that the objective is to recover all the occupied territories.
In his call with Erdogan, the head of the Kremlin denounced “the destructive role of Western states, which saturate kyiv with weapons and military equipment” and they provide “operational information and precise targets” of the attacks.
In Russia it was the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill, close to Putin, who called for a ceasefire on the eve of Orthodox Christmas, which is celebrated next Saturday.
The 76-year-old Orthodox leader called for the laying down of arms from 12 local time (7 in Argentina) on January 6 to midnight on January 7 (7:00 p.m. on January 6 in Argentina).
Nevertheless, this message may have little resonance in Ukraine, where the influence of the Moscow patriarchate has been on the decline in recent yearsuntil the creation in 2018-2019 of an independent Church of Russian religious guardianship.
In fact, last May, three months after the start of the Russian invasion of the country, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church severed its ties with Moscow.
These ceasefire calls come days after a Ukrainian attack on New Year’s Eve killed at least 89 people in the town of Makiivka.in the annexed Donetsk region.
In a rare occurrence, the Russian military admitted the tragic toll after the bombing and came under harsh criticism.
According to the Russian press, the building was completely destroyed by projectiles launched from Himars missile launchers, a weapon supplied by the United States. In the facilities there were hundreds of recruits, that is, non-professional soldiers.
On the ground, the fighting continued, especially in Bakhmut, in eastern Donetsk province, which Russian troops – backed by the Russian private paramilitary group Wagner – have been trying to control since the summer.
According to the daily balance of the Ukrainian Presidency, five people died and eight were injured in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the head of the Wagner group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, considered close to Putin, announced on Thursday the first amnesties for Russian prisoners who had agreed to fight in Ukraine for six months in exchange for their freedom.
