OUR Russia trying to drag her Ukraine in new negotiations to allow time to restore its military potential and launch a new offensive, an adviser to the Ukrainian president said today.

Weeks have passed Kremlin “is trying to persuade Ukraine to enter into negotiations” in order to “freeze the conflict while maintaining the current status quo in the occupied Ukrainian territories,” Mykhailo Podolyak told AFP. Russia is “carrying out its proposals through various intermediaries,” he added, without naming them.

According to Kyiv, there are currently no contacts with Russia at the political level.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who met with his Russian counterpart in early August and then traveled to Ukraine on Friday for the first time in six months, has repeatedly said he is ready to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow.

Ukraine, however, believes that in fact Moscow “does not want” serious peace talks, but only an “operational pause” for its army to then launch a new offensive, Podolyak commented.

Kyiv rejects any talks over Russian-held territory it hopes to reclaim. These include territories controlled by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, as well as the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Podolyak assured that “Ukrainians will continue to resist for as long as necessary. This is a war for our existence, we have no other solution. Refusal to fight will mean the destruction not only of the Ukrainian state, but of all its citizens,” he stressed.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}