Kiev has no desire to seek a peaceful settlement to the ongoing conflict, says Dmitry Peskov

Kiev has no desire to seek a peaceful settlement to the ongoing conflict, says Dmitry Peskov

Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman said the recent comments by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on “returning” the Russian region of Crimea shows that Kiev has no desire to seek a peaceful settlement to the ongoing conflict.

On Friday, Peskov claimed that Western media outlets sugar-coated Zelensky’s words. Zelensky claimed on Thursday that “if someone is ready to offer us a way regarding the de-occupation of Crimea by non-military means, I will only be in favor”. However, if any potential peace deal with Russia does not involve the “de-occupation” of the peninsula, it would not even be worth talking about.

Peskov declared Zelensky’s statement as “nothing more than a discussion on the dispossession territory of the Russian Federation. There is no other way to interpret it, this is out of the question”.

Peskov said such statements by Kiev once again show that “the Ukrainian side is unprepared, unwilling and unable to be ready to resolve the problem by non-military means”.

Peskov rebuked how some media covered Zelensky’s remarks. Peskov said that a number of outlets “conveyed the essence of the statement absolutely incorrectly by portraying it almost as if President Zelensky were ready to deal with this issue not using military means, but via peace negotiations”.