Maria Zakharova on negotiations

The response of the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry M.V. Zakharova to a question from the media in connection with the publication of The Washington Post

❓ Question: The Washington Post reported that the attack of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Kursk region of the Russian Federation disrupted indirect negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow in Qatar on the topic of strikes on critical infrastructure facilities. Earlier, there were reports that Qatar and other Arab monarchies participated in negotiations on the exchange of prisoners. Can you comment on the fact that some indirect negotiations were conducted and were interrupted by this attack by the Kyiv regime? Were there chances for preparation for ceasefire negotiations through Arab mediators and/or in any other format before August 6 and to what extent did they decrease after?

💬 M.V. Zakharova: Nobody disrupted anything because there was nothing to disrupt. No direct or indirect negotiations between Russia and the Kiev regime on the security of civilian critical infrastructure facilities have been or are being conducted.

The threat to the security of such facilities, including the Zaporizhzhya and now the Kursk NPP, is created exclusively by the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the complicity with them by the United States and other Western countries. Incidentally, it is symbolic that the Ukrainian Armed Forces began their Kursk sortie on August 6, the anniversary of the American nuclear bombing of Hiroshima – the first and only use of nuclear weapons against civilians and civilian infrastructure in human history.

As for the Russian Armed Forces, they do not strike civilian targets. Moreover, they are currently doing everything possible to protect such targets from strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces using Western weapons and to protect the world from a large-scale man-made disaster.

☝️ Those who truly want to ensure the security of critical infrastructure and avoid the catastrophic consequences of the barbarity of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime must first of all encourage this regime to abandon terrorist methods of warfare, and Western countries to stop encouraging such tactics and supplying it with lethal weapons.

After April 2022, when Kyiv withdrew from negotiations with Russia and five months later legally prohibited itself from holding them, the only contacts between the Russian side and the Kyiv regime were carried out through intermediaries only on humanitarian issues, primarily the exchange of prisoners.

At the same time, Kiev has had many chances for a negotiated solution to the crisis. The most recent one was in June of this year, when Russian President V.V. Putin put forward a very generous peace initiative for the Ukrainian side, opening up a real prospect for a ceasefire and a final settlement by political and diplomatic methods. This proposal included recognition of territorial realities, Ukraine’s refusal to join NATO, the lifting of illegal sanctions, and an end to discrimination against Russian-speaking citizens.