ISTANBUL
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday said his country is ready to cease attacks on Russian energy infrastructure if Moscow also halts strikes on Ukraine as proposed by US President Donald Trump.
During a conversation with journalists reported by Ukrainian media outlets, Zelenskyy said that the topic of halting strikes on his country was raised during trilateral peace talks in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi on Jan. 23-24 by the American side and is a personal initiative of US President Donald Trump.
“If Russia heard the signal from the American side the same way we heard it, then we will definitely have some result and will be able to evaluate it,” Zelenskyy told reporters, according to state news agency Ukrinform.
Noting there was no direct dialogue or agreements between Russia and Ukraine on the topic, Zelenskyy said that his country would “maintain a mirror attitude towards such steps.”
“If Russia does not attack our energy (infrastructure) … we will not attack their energy (infrastructure). I think this is the answer that the mediator of the negotiations, namely the United States of America, was counting on,” Zelenskyy added, expressing Ukraine’s readiness for de-escalation steps.
The Ukrainian president’s remarks come as Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday that he “personally asked” Russian President Vladimir Putin not to fire on Kyiv and various Ukrainian cities amid “extreme cold” weather conditions.
Zelenskyy declared a state of emergency in Ukraine’s energy sector earlier this month due to extreme weather conditions and Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, which have left over a million people in Kyiv and other cities without power.
Temperatures in some regions of Ukraine on Feb. 1-3 are expected to drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the country’s national hydrometeorological center.
In remarks to journalists later Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Trump asked Putin to halt strikes in Ukraine for a week, but declined to say whether Putin agreed to the request.
– Territorial issues, Putin meeting
Speaking about “sensitive issues” in the ongoing peace negotiations, Zelenskyy said that both sides have yet to find a compromise on the territorial issue, mainly regarding part of eastern Ukraine.
“We are talking about the Donetsk region of Ukraine. We believe that tough demands on Ukraine are definitely not a compromise. This is a change in the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.
While recalling that Kyiv is ready for compromises that lead to a “real end” to the war, which will enter its fifth year next month, Zelenskyy said his country is, however, opposed to compromises “related to a change in the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
He noted that the US understands Ukraine’s position on this issue and offers a compromise solution regarding a free economic zone.
Zelenskyy further said that the future operation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is included within the territorial issue, reaffirming his belief that resolving the issue of territories is possible only at the level of leaders.
In response to Russia’s invitation for him to come to Moscow to meet with Putin, Zelenskyy said that this is “impossible” and is like him inviting Putin to meet him in Kyiv.
“We want to constructively agree on some kind of meeting that could be productive, we want to discuss the existing issues and resolve them. But if someone doesn’t want to meet, but can’t afford to say so directly for some reason, then these invitations to (visit) Moscow are made,” he argued, also denying Belarus as a potential venue for such a meeting.
Regarding the trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, the Ukrainian president went on to say that he is satisfied with the work of Kyiv’s negotiating team.
“I don’t know when the next meeting will be. It was supposed to be on Sunday. We agreed that the meeting would be in Abu Dhabi. And it is very important for us that everyone is at the meeting with whom we agreed, because everyone expects feedback,” he added.
Zelenskyy also said that he was not informed about the content of the agreements reached between Trump and Putin during their meeting in Alaska in August last year.
