Kuleba’s No-Peace Peace Proposal

Dec. 27, 2022 (EIRNS)—Dmytro Kuleba, the Foreign Minister of the Kiev regime, told AP in an interview that Ukraine would like to convene a peace conference at the UN by February, mediated by UN Secretary General António Guterres. However, Russia is unlikely to take part. Kuleba said Russia must face a war-crimes tribunal before his country directly talks with Moscow. “They can only be invited to this step in this way,” Kuleba said.

He said, however, that other nations should feel free to engage with Russians, as happened before a grain agreement between Turkey and Russia. “Every war ends in a diplomatic way,” he said. “Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.”

AP reports that the Kremlin quickly rejected Kuleba’s caveat. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti that Russia never followed conditions set by others. “Only our own and common sense.”

TASS reports that Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs and a member of the Russian delegation to talks with Ukraine, responded that “Ukraine is still not ready to hold peace negotiations; all statements made by Kuleba are a smoke screen.” Slutsky further remarked that it was the Ukrainian side that withdrew from the Istanbul peace process, and “It wasn’t us who were evading peace talks; it wasn’t us who staged the provocation in Bucha.”

Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy wrote a Telegram post (in Russian) on Dec. 26, regarding Kuleba’s proposal: “Firstly, Foreign Minister Kuleba said that Ukraine was proposing to hold a ‘peace summit’ by the end of February, where the UN Secretary General could act as a kind of ‘mediator.’

“Secondly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine gave birth to a lengthy statement that Russia allegedly became a member of the Security Council and the UN in general illegally and with a call to expel us from there....

“If you try to add these two news, they are mutually exclusive. What can a ‘peace summit’ be without Russia? Meanwhile, imagining one without Ukraine is very easy. And this is precisely the nightmarish scenario for Kuleba and Kislitsa, whose initiatives proliferate such scenarios. In a word, ‘Diplomacy 404’!”