Negotiating with Russia will be capitulation: Zelensky’s adviser
The West’s attempts to persuade Ukraine to negotiate with Moscow, after a series of major military victories by Kiev, are “bizarre” and amount to asking for its capitulation, a key adviser to the Ukrainian presidency told AFP. “When you have the initiative on the battlefield, it’s slightly bizarre to receive proposals like: ‘you will not be able to do everything by military means anyway, you need to negotiate,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak. This would mean that the country “that recovers its territories, must capitulate to the country that is losing,” he added, during an interview with AFP at his office in the presidency building in Kyiv. US media recently reported that some senior officials were beginning to encourage Ukraine to consider talks, which Zelensky has so far rejected without a prior withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory.
“There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably in the true sense of the word maybe not achievable through military means,” top US General Mark Milley said earlier this month, estimating that there is “a window of opportunity for negotiation”.
According to Podolyak, Moscow has not made “any direct proposal” to Kiev for peace talks, preferring to transmit them through intermediaries and even raising the possibility of a ceasefire.
Negotiating with Russia ‘makes no sense’
Kyiv sees such talk as mere manoeuvring by the Kremlin to win some respite on the ground and prepare a new offensive.
“Russia doesn’t want negotiations. Russia is conducting a communication campaign called ‘negotiations’,” the Ukraine presidential adviser said. “It will simply stall for time. In the meantime, it will train its mobilised forces, find additional weapons” and fortify its positions,” he warned.
Despite Russia’s heavy military defeats in recent weeks, including Ukraine retaking the key southern city of Kherson, President Vladimir Putin still thinks “he can destroy Ukraine, this is his obsession” and negotiating with him “makes no sense”, Podolyak argued.
He denied the West was trying to pressure Ukraine into negotiating.
Following massive Russian withdrawals from the Kyiv region in March, then from the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September, the liberation of Kherson this month marked a “fundamental” turning point in the conflict, according to Podolyak.
Spurred on by its string of military victories, Ukraine can “afford no pause” in its counteroffensive, despite the arrival of winter cold and snow that make the situation on the ground more difficult.
“Today, even a little pause just adds to the losses suffered by Ukraine,” said the official.
Shelling near nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia
Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has come under Ukrainian shelling but there has been no radiation leak detected, TASS reported on Sunday citing an official from Russian nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom.
Fifteen shells were fired at the plant’s facilities, TASS quoted Rosenergoatom adviser Renat Karchaa as saying.
‘Iran to help Russia build drones for Ukraine war’
Russia has reached agreement with Iran to begin manufacturing hundreds of unmanned weaponised aircraft on Russian soil, The Washington Post reported, citing intelligence seen by US and other Western security agencies.
The Post said Russian and Iranian officials finalised the deal during a meeting in Iran in early November.
Russia and Iran are moving rapidly to transfer designs and key components that could allow production to begin within months, three officials familiar with the matter said, according to the newspaper.