Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that agreement is required on both sides for any kind of peace talks with Ukraine, adding that Moscow never rejected talks with Kyiv, reported Reuters. Putin was addressing a press conference after meeting African leaders in St Petersburg and hearing their calls for Moscow to move ahead with their peace plan. He reportedly said that an African initiative could be a basis for peace in Ukraine but that Ukrainian attacks made it hard to realise, quoted Reuters.
“There are provisions of this peace initiative that are being implemented,” he said. “But there are things that are difficult or impossible to implement.”
Talking about a ceasefire, Putin said that when the other side has taken an offensive stance, they cannot cease fire. “But the Ukrainian army is on the offensive, they are attacking, they are implementing a large-scale strategic offensive operation… We cannot cease fire when we are under attack,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
On peace talks, he said, “We did not reject them… In order for this process to begin, there needs to be agreement on both sides.”
Notably, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the idea of a ceasefire now that would leave Russia in control of nearly a fifth of his country.
This comes as Russia vowed harsh retaliatory measures against Ukraine following Kyiv’s alleged ‘terrorist’ drone attack on Moscow on Monday. It said that harsh measures will be taken against Ukraine for this brazen act of terror, Reuters reported. As per a senior Ukrainian official, nobody was hurt in the attack, however, he added that there would be more such attacks. One of the drones during the said attack struck close to the Moscow building where the Russian military holds briefings on what it calls its “special military operation”, a symbolic blow that underscored the reach of such drones, as reported by news agency Reuters.
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