The Kremlin said it would not discuss the conditions of a peace treaty drafted in the early months of the war in Ukraine after a Wall Street Journal report published on Friday revealed details of the proposed deal.
WSJ reported that Russia’s draft treaty, dated April 15, 2022, outlined Ukraine’s future as “permanently neutral,” limited to a smaller army, annexed Crimea remaining under Moscow’s control and Russian enshrined as one of the country's official languages.
Kyiv’s delegation stepped back from the negotiating table at the time, and the Kremlin accused Ukraine of abandoning the talks. Moscow has since blamed Ukraine’s Western allies for the breakdown in negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Moscow should first stop bombing Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, blocking Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and threatening the use of nuclear weapons before resuming negotiations.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday described the 2022 draft peace deal as “obsolete,” according to state media.
“Yes, there was an agreed text, but we wouldn’t like to publish it,” the Kommersant business daily quoted Peskov telling reporters when asked about WSJ’s reporting.
“There were certain conditions on the ground in March 2022, they’re different today,” he added, referring to the Russian forces’ initial struggles on the battlefield and eventual capture of parts of Ukrainian territories.
“The legal status of the [Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia] territories that have become regions of the Russian Federation is written in the Constitution of our country,” Peskov said, referring to Moscow's widely condemned 2022 annexation of the four Ukrainian territories.
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