The powerful Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, or upper legislative house, Senator Valentina Matviyenko, gave a wide-ranging press conference at the end of the spring parliamentary session which included remarks about the recent revelations in Washington about the total fabrication known as “Russiagate.” According to TASS, Matviyenko suggested that all sanctions imposed against Russia should be immediately revoked, since it has been established that the premise they were based on has been fully discredited.
“The level of manipulation that was carried out, the forgery of invented facts, the falsification of accusations against a particular state is, of course, a disgrace to the United States,” she stated. “It was not just a fake, invented by someone, but a deliberate provocation by that U.S. administration. Well, if you have admitted, gentlemen, that this is a lie, this is a fabrication, then you will cancel everything that you have done based on this lie.”
On the recently-revived dialogue with the U.S., she said: “In addition to political dialogue, there is active communication between the special services, which, in my opinion, is very important. It seems to me that this security safeguard principle has been restored.” She added that Russia had no inflated expectations about the new administration in Washington: “We look at things pragmatically.”
On Ukraine, she was blunt in her restatement of standing Russian policy: without addressing the underlying causes of the crisis, no negotiated ceasefire is possible. Never again, she said, would Ukraine be able to threaten Russia. TASS reported: “These are the red lines that we will never cross, these are the positions that we will never give up, because we do not need any short-term solutions: to please someone, to meet absolutely unacceptable demands—to stop fighting for a few days. Our main conditions are to ensure a stable peace in the future, and that no threat to Russia ever again emanates from the territory of Ukraine. And we will achieve these goals,” she said.
However, Matviyenko was somewhat positive about the recent third round of talks with Ukraine. “Russia has constantly insisted and initiated the start of the third round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations. The very fact that negotiations are underway and that the third round has taken place are, in my opinion, positive results.” However, “there is no real, sincere interest on the part of the Ukrainian side to negotiate and sign a peace agreement.” Therefore, there is no reason for Presidents Putin and Zelenskyy to meet at this point: “There is no subject at all for the meeting. It just doesn’t exist today.”
Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky made the same point: There will be no Putin-Zelenskyy meeting unless and until an agreement is finalized.
