Vladimir Putin feels that Russia is “the stronger social gathering,” President of Lithuania has argued
The present second within the battle between Russia and Ukraine is the “worst” attainable one for Kiev to start negotiations with Moscow, Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nauseda has prompt.
Russian forces have been steadily advancing in Donbass and different components of the frontline for the reason that begin of the yr, capturing dozens of settlements, together with the strategic city of Avdeevka in February and the important thing stronghold of Ugledar earlier this month. Territory underneath Ukrainian management in Russia’s Kursk Area, the place Kiev troops launched an incursion in early August, has additionally been shrinking in current weeks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks he’s prevailing and pushing Ukraine into the nook,” Nauseda informed journalists on Thursday, as he arrived on the summit of EU leaders in Brussels.
“That is the worst second to start out negotiations as a result of he feels Russia is the stronger facet,” he stated as cited by Reuters.
Ukrainian chief Vladimir Zelensky is scheduled to handle the gathering in Brussels later within the day in an effort to promote his self-styled ‘victory plan.’
Zelensky offered his proposals to the Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday, saying that these embrace a direct invitation to Kiev to hitch NATO, the lifting of restrictions on the usage of Western-supplied long-range weapons for strikes on internationally-recognized Russian territory, in addition to the deployment of “a complete non-nuclear strategic deterrence bundle” on Ukrainian soil. “This plan may be carried out. It is determined by the companions. I emphasize: on companions. It doesn’t precisely depend upon Russia,” he claimed.
“There may be nothing new in there,” the Lithuanian president stated of Zelensky’s plan. “There may be what we needed to do however didn’t do on the Vilnius summit [in 2023] on inviting Ukraine to hitch NATO, after which the identical factor occurred once more in Washington [in July].”
“So long as we don’t do it, we’re removed from victory. The very causal hyperlinks listed here are self-evident,” Nauseda, who has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine throughout the battle, added.
Russian Overseas Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described Zelensky’s proposals a “set of incoherent slogans,” saying that they weren’t a ‘victory plan,’ however extra of a “plan for the misfortune of Ukraine.”
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced that Moscow was able to cease the combating and instantly start talks with Ukraine if Kiev had been to formally hand over its NATO aspirations and withdraw from the Donetsk and Lugansk Individuals’s Republics, and from the Kherson and Zaporozhye, areas, which joined Russia after referendums within the fall of 2022.
Zelensky rejected the supply, branding it an “ultimatum.” The Kremlin stated these phrases had been now not on the desk after Ukraine launched its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Area.
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