The head of US diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, appeared to have left the door ajar for possible future border talks for Ukraine, hastening to add that the decision rests with the Ukrainians.

Speaking before a congressional committee yesterday, Mr Blinken stressed that any peace deal with Russia must be “fair and sustainable”, that it would respect Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity, but “how it will be determined specifically on the ground, we are waiting for the Ukrainians to us they will say.”

In doing so, he seems to have acknowledged the fact that it will be difficult for Ukrainians to regain all the territories annexed by Russia, especially the Crimean peninsula.

“I think there are areas in Ukraine that Ukrainians are determined to fight for, and there are probably areas that they will decide to rebuild in other ways,” he said.

Mr. Blinken specifically responded to Republican politician Chris Stewart’s question about whether the United States supports Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s pledge to reclaim Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

The head of American diplomacy, who judges that today there are no necessary conditions for holding peace talksinsisted that “these are decisions that Ukrainians must make” because they concern “how they see their future and how this will affect national sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”

“What we don’t want for the good of the whole world is for this to be resolved (…) in such a way that the Russians can redeploy, rearm and attack again,” he added.

The United States and Western countries do not recognize either the annexation of Crimea or the territories seized by the Russian armed forces in eastern Ukraine, where fierce fighting continues.

The US-led alliance that provides military assistance to Ukraine says it is ready to continue to support it for as long as it takes and that the Russian military must be withdrawn from Ukraine, but tends to be generally evasive when it comes to Crimea.

Source: RES-IPE