Zelensky Makes Clear to Multiple Media, There Is No Progress without Dialogue with Putin

Dec. 3, 2019 (EIRNS)—On the eve of the NATO summit in London, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky granted a four-way interview in Kiev to Time, Le Monde of France, Der Spiegel of Germany, and Gazeta Wyborcza of Poland, in which he stressed, among other things, the necessity of talking directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a pre-requisite for ending the war in the Donbas region. The next steps there, he said according to Time’s account of the interview, is another prisoner exchange and a ceasefire, a real one where the shooting actually stops.

Zelensky’s third point is elections, but “before elections, we need a full withdrawal, a full disarming of all illegal formations, military formations, no matter the type, no matter the group, no matter the uniform, no matter what weapons.” He said that “Resolving these three points will create an understanding that we want to end the war.”

As for the border with Russia, Zelensky said this will be the most difficult question in the negotiations. And if those talks fail? Zelensky was quite adamant. “I will not agree to go to war in the Donbas,” he said.

“I know there are a lot of hotheads, especially those who hold rallies and say, ‘Let’s go fight and win it all back!’ But at what price? What is the cost? It’s another story of lives and land. And I won’t do it. If that doesn’t satisfy society, then a new leader will come who will satisfy those demands. But I will never go for that, because my position in life is to be a human being above all. And I cannot send them there. How? How many of them will die? Hundreds of thousands, and then an all-out war will start, an all-out war in Ukraine, and then across Europe.”

On Putin, Zelensky said his three phone calls with the Russian President have all been productive. “We got our sailors back [in a prisoner exchange],” he said. “We got back our guys who wound up behind bars under tragic circumstances, our political prisoners. That’s very important.” He was referring to Nov. 25, 2018 incident between Ukraine and Russia in the Kerch Strait.

Separately, in a video posted to Facebook, Zelensky is reported by TASS to have said that there will be no progress in efforts to resolve the Donbas conflict without dialogue with Putin. “You know, we could do without dialogue but it would be like using a running machine—you are running in place and there is no movement forward. We don’t want to run in place, we would like all this to end,” Zelensky pointed out. Zelensky addressed the Ukrainian people, asking them not to trust politicians who criticized the upcoming talks, and pointed out that there was no alternative to resolving the conflict through diplomatic means. “Don’t believe anyone, no one can achieve anything through war, no one wants to waste hundreds of thousands of lives. Diplomacy is the only way,” he stressed.