Top UK diplomat came to Kiev to disrupt possibility of talks, Ukrainian lawmaker says
The provocative role of UK politicians in disrupting efforts for a peaceful settlement has been reported before
MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. The goal of British Foreign Secretary David Lammy's visit to Kiev was to impede a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict once again, Alexander Dubinsky, an opposition-minded member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament), stated on his Telegram channel.
He pointed out that Lammy’s urgent visit was as necessary as an urgent interview by Vladimir Zelensky to British media outlets "to prevent a peaceful settlement and undermine the plan that [US special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith] Kellogg is taking to Munich. What needs to be done for this? An urgent counteroffensive. I believe its battle plan was brought to Zelensky," the lawmaker wrote.
Lammy was in Kiev on February 5. According to Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK Valery Zaluzhny, he aimed to discuss reinforcing Ukraine’s security. Not long before, on January 16, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Kiev.
On February 5, Bloomberg, citing sources, reported that Kellogg plans to present US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Ukraine conflict at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, which will run February 14-16. The news agency did not specify which provisions it contains. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump tasked Kellogg with ending the Ukrainian conflict within 100 days.
The provocative role of UK politicians in disrupting efforts for a peaceful settlement has been reported before. Since the onset of the special military operation, Russia and Ukraine have held talks in Belarus and in Istanbul in March 2022. By then, delegations from both countries had initialed the agreement draft which included, among others, Ukraine’s obligations on its neutral non-bloc status and the rejection of stationing foreign arms, including nuclear ones, on its soil. However, Ukraine unilaterally cut off the negotiation process. As David Arakhamia, the head of the Ukrainian delegation, admitted later, it happened on the suggestion by then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who traveled to Kiev specifically for this purpose.