The Russian delegation says that negotiations with Ukraine “might not be over"

OLENA ROSHCHINA — FRIDAY, 27 MAY 2022, 13:51

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma's committee on international affairs and a member of the Russian delegation on the talks with Ukraine, said that negotiations with Kyiv were "on a low profile" but had not been suspended.

Source: TASS

Slutsky's quote: "There are certain issues with the negotiations, they have been, so to speak, at a low profile for some time ... This format may not be complete. And I’m talking now as carefully as possible."

Details: According to Slutsky, at first the proposals of the Russian Federation had the support from the Ukrainian side, but then Kyiv "rolled [it] back".

Slutsky also said that "denazification" in Ukraine could not be reversed, and that "war criminals," as he called Ukraine's defenders, should be sentenced "so that neo-Nazism does not [get the chance to] raise its head."

On 27 May, Leonid Slutsky was elected the new chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) instead of the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

At the same time, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov once again blamed Kyiv for the lack of peace agreements and pretended not to understand what Ukraine's leadership wanted.

According to him, the talks were frozen by the decision of the Ukrainian side, and "Ukraine's leadership constantly makes contradictory statements, which does not allow [us] to fully understand what the Ukrainian side wants and whether it is ready to have a clear approach and understand the real situation."

Background: On 26 May, Peskov claimed that Ukraine should accept that the part of its territory is controlled by Russia, although President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team made it clear that the renunciation of Ukraine's territorial integrity was not even considered.

On 17 May, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that negotiations with Russia were suspended for a number of reasons, the key point was that Russia did not understand the current world affairs and its negative role.