Kremlin: Russia is ready for peace talks with Ukraine without preconditions
Russia is ready to start peace talks with Ukraine without preconditions, said Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Rudenko. He noted that Russian diplomats have repeatedly spoken of their readiness for such negotiations, which "were interrupted through no fault of our own."
"On our part, there are no preconditions, except for the main condition - that Ukraine shows goodwill," Rudenko said.
He recalled that Kyiv adopted a law prohibiting peaceful negotiations with Moscow. The Kremlin official stressed that this is a conscious choice of the Ukrainian authorities. Earlier, the Kremlin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow is open to contacts with Kyiv, but Ukraine itself has banned any negotiations with the Russian side.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has put forward several conditions under which peace talks with Moscow can begin. They are restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the return of all annexed territories, compensation for the damage, guarantees that the attack will never happen again.
On September 30, in response to the annexation of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Zelensky signed a decree on the impossibility of negotiations with the current Russian President Vladimir Putin.