Russia Says It's Ready To Negotiate With Ukraine

Russia is ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine but Kyiv and its Western backers have refused to engage in talks, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview, Euronews reported.

Photo Insert: The Kremlin says it will fight until all its aims are achieved while Kyiv says it will not rest until every Russian soldier is ejected from all of its territories, including Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said if Russia were sincere in negotiating, then it should withdraw from Crimea, and from parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporishshia and Kherson regions, withdraw its annexations of the four regions and pay for the damage it has wrought on Ukraine.

Ukraine has insisted Putin is not negotiating but demanding that Kyiv recognize Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territories Moscow had stolen.

The Kremlin says it will fight until all its aims are achieved while Kyiv says it will not rest until every Russian soldier is ejected from all of its territories, including Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014, Reuters and the Associated Press (AP) also reported.

Russia has already lost more than 102,000 soldiers and trillions of dollars worth of tanks, ships, planes, helicopters, missiles, and other weapons systems. Russians are also losing patience with Putin as Ukrainian operations on Russian soil have destroyed tanks, planes, and radar systems.

"We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them - we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are," Putin told Rossiya 1 state television in the interview.

CIA Director William Burns said in an interview published this month that while most conflicts end in negotiation, the CIA's assessment was that Russia was not yet serious about a real negotiation to end the war.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Putin needed to return to reality and acknowledge that it was Russia that did not want any negotiations.

"Russia single-handedly attacked Ukraine and is killing citizens," Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. "Russia doesn’t want negotiations, but tries to avoid responsibility."

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