The United States is ready to support negotiations between Ukraine and Russia if President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expresses his readiness to do so, said Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the US State Department.
“This has been our long-standing policy that President Zelenskyy should decide when the time comes for negotiations. This is not something that we or any other country should push him to do,” he stressed.
Miller emphasized that the United States would support President Zelenskyy in any process “aimed at ensuring a just and lasting peace, but this is ultimately his decision.”
At the same time, he said, there are no signs that Putin is ready to abandon his goal of continuing to absorb Ukrainian territory. He would agree to negotiations under which he would “get everything he wants, and Ukraine would not get anything which it has a legal right to”.
Miller summarized, “These are not the negotiations in which Zelenskyy is interested, and he should not be interested”.