MOSCOW, July 2. /RASS/. Kiev has taken note of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ceasefire proposal but thinks that such initiatives cannot be considered in isolation from other settlement aspects, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office Igor Zhovkva said.
"He [Orban] laid bare his thought. This is not the first country to speak about such potential scenarios. The president heeded his vis-a-vis and shared his position in response. Ukraine’s position is quite clear, transparent and well-known. <…> the matter is that such processes [a ceasefire] cannot be considered in isolation," he said in an interview with Ukraine’s national television.
According to Zhovkva, Ukraine’s position is that the crisis settlement could be reached through the Kiev-initiated peace summits.
After his talks in Kiev, Orban proposed that Ukraine consider a ceasefire as a step toward starting talks with Russia to settle the armed conflict. Zelensky however, did not even mention this initiative at the same briefing.
At a meeting with senior Russian diplomats on June 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward new terms for resolving the Ukraine conflict. These include pulling out Ukrainian troops from the four new Russian regions and lifting all Western sanctions on Russia. He also demanded that Kiev drop its bid for NATO membership and Ukraine’s non-aligned and non-nuclear status be enshrined. Putin also pointed out that if Ukraine and the West reject these terms, they may change in the future. Kiev quickly rejected this initiative.