MOSCOW, February 4. /TASS/. Many countries have expressed their readiness to become a platform for the potential future talks on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, a senior Russian diplomat told TASS.

"We have no lack of such offers. Several countries have already offered us platforms for talks, first of all our ally Belarus," Alexey Polishchuk, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second CIS Department, said when asked if Russia had concrete proposals from countries ready to host potential talks on Ukraine.

The senior diplomat added that Russia was "grateful to partners for their readiness to contribute to mediation efforts and provide a platform." "However, the most important question now is not where exactly the talks will be held, but with whom and what we will negotiate and sign agreements on," Polishchuk concluded.

Senior Russian officials have repeatedly expressed their readiness to negotiate a way out of the Ukraine conflict. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said Zelensky’s ban on any negotiations with Putin and Ukrainian initiatives showing how detached from reality Kiev currently is are among the major obstacles to peace talks.

Putin has stated that now that Zelensky’s legitimacy as Ukrainian president has expired, Moscow would need to search for a legitimate authority to sign legally binding agreements with. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed that even as Russia could engage with Ukraine, any deals that come out of the talks must be signed by a legitimate Ukrainian government.