Kremlin: Putin Yesterday Ordered Russian Forces to Suspend Operation in Ukraine as He Was Expecting Talks With Kiev to Take Place.
Russia says it has resumed the military operation in Ukraine after Kiev refused to negotiate
Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has continued after the country’s leadership had declined to negotiate, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday.
President Vladimir Putin previously ordered the Russian troops to halt their advance on Friday, awaiting a response from Kiev, Moscow said. It added that the offensive continued on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that he was ready to sit down for talks with Russia in order to end hostilities between the countries. The same day, Peskov told reporters that Moscow was ready to hold talks in Minsk, Belarus. He later claimed that the Ukrainian side first offered to move the meeting to Warsaw, Poland, and then stopped responding.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a temporary halt to the Russian military operation in Ukraine on Friday afternoon in connection with the expectation of negotiations with Kiev, but the operation was resumed Saturday afternoon after the Ukrainian leadership refused to talk, Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov has said.
“Yesterday afternoon, in connection with the expected negotiations with the Ukrainian leadership, the Russian president and supreme commander ordered the suspension of the advance of the main forces,” Peskov said, speaking to reporters on Saturday. “Since the Ukrainian side essentially refused to negotiate, the advance of the main Russian forces resumed this afternoon in accordance with the operational plan,” he added.
Peskov clarified that the halt in the advance did not lead to a stop in localized fighting, with hostilities continuing across a number of areas.
“There were clashes with mobile groups of nationalists and Banderites, who used light vehicles and trucks fitted with weapons on the principle of ‘jihad mobiles’, only there they are now called ‘Bandera mobiles’,” the spokesman said.
‘Banderite’ is a reference to Stepan Bandera, a
WWII-era Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi collaborator whose followers exterminated tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and Red Army troops during the war. Bandera has been lionized as a national hero by Ukraine’s authorities ever since the 2014 coup in Kiev.
Moscow has distinguished the Ukrainian nationalist formations from the regular Ukrainian Army, with President Putin on Friday
calling on the country’s military to seize power from the “gang of junkies and neo-Nazis who settled in Kiev and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
invited Putin to “sit down at the negotiating table to stop the death of people” on Friday. The Kremlin
responded by expressing willingness to send a delegation of high-ranking officials to Minsk, Belarus for talks.
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