April 13, 2024 (EIRNS)—During an April 11 meeting at the Kremlin on the occasion of Cosmonautics Day, the Presidents of Belarus and Russia discussed the broad strategic situation, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in Ukraine. Part of their exchange was reported on the Kremlin website.
President Vladimir Putin began by celebrating the fact that “our cosmonauts, including the first female cosmonaut from Belarus, returned safely to Earth.” Putin immediately announced Russia’s latest successful test launch of a nuclear-capable ICBM: “We have another good event—our new heavy missile flew from a new spaceport. This is yet another stage in the development of the space industry in Russia.”
On Ukraine, Putin emphasized that “we have never rejected a peaceful settlement of disputes,” and suggested that the starting point today is to return to the agreement that both sides had agreed to and initialed back in November 2022, before the British and Americans pressured Ukraine to reject it. “We largely completed this work there, which took us much time and effort. We initialed it on both sides. Ukraine also initialed it. This paper, this document was initialed,” Putin recalled. He added: “At the time we were told that we could not sign the document in this manner, that Ukraine could not sign the document `with a gun to its head,’ that we had to withdraw our troops from Kyiv. So we did. Immediately after we did that, our agreements were discarded. It would be funny if it were not so sad.”
