NEW YORK, November 11. /TASS/. During his latest visit to Kiev, the US president’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan persuaded Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to create an illusion of his readiness for talks with Russia, a former high-ranking US military official said.
"He [Sullivan] said: 'It would be useful, apparently, for you to negotiate with Putin.' One of the reasons given <…>: there are members of NATO who are suffering from ‘Ukraine fatigue.’ It would be helpful if you express a willingness to negotiate with [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin. Well, it’s more than ‘Ukraine fatigue.’ People are saying: we don’t want this war to continue, we want an end to the war, why can’t you negotiate it and end the war. And the day after, Mr. Zelensky said very clearly, without hesitation, that preconditions for negotiations with Russia are that Russians evacuate from all their territory," Col. (ret.) Douglas Macgregor, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Donald Trump administration, said in an interview to the Judjing Freedom YouTube channel on Thursday.
"Of course they are not going to do that. So the whole idea of negotiations is dead," he continued. "I think Sullivan was saying to him [Zelensky]: ‘Make noise! Create the illusion that you are willing to negotiate. Even that did not work."
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had to backtrack on his earlier claim about the impossibility of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s governent "due to soft nudging by the Biden administration," the Politico newspaper wrote on Tuesday citing own sources. According to the paper, Zelensky made no mention of impossibility of talks with Putin when he listed the five preconditions for talks with Moscow on Monday. The article said the change in the Kiev government’s position occurred after lengthy talks between Kiev and Washington, including during a visit to Kiev by the US president’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Russian leadership remained ready to continue negotiations on Ukraine. He noted that Russia was ready to hear out its Western colleagues if they put forward a proposal to organize a dialogue on reducing tensions taking into account Moscow’s interests. Peskov also suggested that talks on Ukraine should be conducted above all with Washington since Kiev is acting "on external orders".