MADRID, January 9. /TASS/. Western countries did not ask the Ukrainian authorities to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Russia, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.

"Our allies did not ask us to negotiate with Russia to suspend the hostilities, neither when we met at the delegation level nor in closed-door meetings in a reduced format. This is not something that anyone would dare to offer as an option," he said.

At the end of December, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the West will continue to resort to ideological narratives, refusing a peaceful solution, until it destroys Ukraine. The diplomat noted that recently the topic of the negotiation process has been touched upon in the Western public space, but Western countries cannot talk openly about the need for dialogue.