NSDC Secretary Danilov calls peace talks with Russia political suicide

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov ruled out the possibility of peace talks with Russia against the background of the high intensity of the fighting. In his opinion, this would be a political assassination of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In an interview with the Ukrinform agency, Oleksiy Danilov was asked if negotiations with Russia were possible to return control of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. “And how do you imagine using diplomacy with such an intensity of warfare?” Danilov answered.

He also commented on the possibility of negotiations between Vladimir Zelensky and the Russian side in the future. “If someone wants a political assassination of our president, he can offer it,” he said. Mr. Danilov added that Russia is striving for the “political elimination” of Mr. Zelensky, as “he has shown and proved to the whole world that he is the leader of the nation.”

In the spring of 2022, Ukraine withdrew from the negotiation process with Russia. The parties accused each other of being unwilling to conduct a dialogue. Russia insisted on recognizing its control over the Crimea, DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Among the terms of the negotiations, Ukraine called the return of the territory under its control according to the internationally recognized borders of 1991. In the fall of 2022, Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree according to which negotiations with Russia are impossible while its President Vladimir Putin.

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Olesya Pavlenko