Foreign minister: Ukraine cannot negotiate peaceful settlement in Donbas endlessly

"We have been doing this for five years, we have been holding meetings in different formats, we have had over a hundred meetings in the Minsk format, this will be at least the fourth Normandy format meeting. President Zelensky has long stated that we, Ukrainian people, have no more time to continue negotiating in different formats for the next five years. What we are trying to achieve right now is to meet, lay all our cards on the table, and say: these are our conditions, for our people who are on the other side of the contact line. Whether Russia likes it or not, these are red lines which the Ukrainian government is not going to cross,” Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko told journalists after the meeting of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

According to him, if Russia is really going to return to the civilized world, it must fulfill the requirements the world puts forward for it. Otherwise, there is no hope that sanctions will be lifted.

Upcoming talks in the Normandy format, as the minister stated, are a “moment of truth” and no one wants them to end without result.

 “We have taken pretty painful steps to make this meeting happen. You see what is happening in Kyiv right now, all those protests where conscious citizens disagree with the plan. People tell us, including in the parliament right now: ‘Do you seriously think that Putin is ready to agree to de-escalation?’ These questions raise concerns of our citizens and the government members as well. We are aware of this, as well as of the fact that our army, as it is today, is not able to fully restore our sovereignty. We are forced to negotiate, but we cannot and will not negotiate endlessly,” Vadym Prystaiko emphasized.

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