Russian officials continue to confirm the view that, following the Kursk incursion, there is nothing for Moscow to talk about with the Kiev regime. “At this point, given this venture, we are not going to talk,” Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov said, replying to a question by the Shot Telegram channel about the possibility of negotiations, reported TASS. According to Ushakov, Putin’s proposals “have not been annulled but at the moment the negotiation process is completely inappropriate.” Rather, the time frame for any potential talks “depends on the situation, including on the battlefield.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also made this clear yesterday in an interview with TV host Pavel Zarubin on the Moscow.Kremlin.Putin program on Rossiya-1 TV. “The President said it very clearly, that following attacks, or even incursion, on the Kursk Region, any talks are impossible. The president also said a very important thing, and I would like to draw attention to it, that we will give an assessment of this situation later,” he said.
Lavrov also shot down rumors of secret talks between Moscow and Kiev, which were first reported by the Washington Post on Aug. 17. “And as for the rumor that has been spreading in recent time about some clandestine contacts to prepare Qatar-brokered talks on issues of Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities or rumors that our Turkish neighbors are planning to try to be mediators in the sphere of food security, but in the context of ensuring free navigation in the Black Sea, you should understand the real goal of such schemes,” the Post quoted him as saying. “This is done in the wake of the Bürgenstock conference, which yielded a decision to set up three working groups—on energy, on food in the context of safe navigation, and on humanitarian issues (prisoner exchanges and so on).”
Lavrov was referring to Ukraine’s Bürgenstock, Switzerland “peace conference” held on June 15-16, to which Russia was not invited. He situated the rumors as being an extension of a “bad faith” process at Bürgenstock. “These three working groups have been set up. Their meetings are being prepared, and whatever might be said about any hints that Russia would be invited there in some way, this is not true,” Lavrov said. “Because the Bürgenstock process is unacceptable for us as its only goal is to promote the ultimatum under the name of the ‘Zelenskyy formula.’”
