Since February 24, 2022, Meduza has been broadcasting live about the Russian-Ukrainian war. We publish your messages every day because we are certain that we need to keep talking about war. Putin admitted that Ukraine had offered to stop attacks on Russian cities if Russia abandoned long-range bombing of Ukraine. He rejected this idea, because, in his opinion, Kiev suffers more from such attacks. What do you think about this? How do your relatives and friends, who previously distanced themselves from what is happening, feel about Putin’s apparent reluctance to end the war, which is increasingly spreading across Russian territory? Do their opinions change? The feedback form is at the end of this article. You can read the previous day’s review here.
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Alexander Lukashenko did not transmit any messages to Vladimir Putin from Vladimir Zelensky, Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said today.
Last weekend, Lukashenko met with the Russian President in Valdai. This meeting, as Peskov explained, was informal, so it was not covered in detail in state media.
At the same time, Peskov did not directly deny that Lukashenko could be a channel of communication with Kiev for Moscow. The Kremlin representative answered the corresponding question in this way:
In order for these existing channels to function and operate, they must remain in the shadows. It must remain non-public. Therefore I will not answer your question. But, of course, the topic of Ukraine was on the agenda.
Immediately after speaking with Putin in Valdai, Lukashenko flew to China, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The topics of the meeting were officially defined as bilateral relations. Following its findings, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that the country “supports Belarus in protecting its national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.” Ukraine was not mentioned directly in official communications.
Speculation appeared in the media that Lukashenko could be a mediator in indirect contacts between Moscow and Kiev, against the backdrop of Zelensky’s statements that he had conveyed a new peace proposal to Russia. It was conducted the day before the meeting between Lukashenko and Putin in Valdai. The day before, Lukashenko himself said he had met with Ukrainian representatives in Minsk.
Relations between Minsk and Kiev have deteriorated in recent weeks: Zelensky repeatedly stated in the spring that Russia wanted to drag Belarus into further war, and in June, in an ultimatum, he demanded the removal of repeaters from the Belarusian-Russian border, which, he claimed, had been used to correct Russian strikes. Minsk did not respond publicly, but after the ultimatum expired, Zelensky himself said the repeaters stopped working.
Vladimir Putin publicly continues to insist that the Russian authorities intend to continue the war until “the objectives of the special military operation are achieved.”
In a conversation with VGTRK correspondent Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, the Russian president said he rejected Ukraine’s proposal to mutually halt attacks on targets located some distance from the front line — that is, in fact, on oil refineries in major Russian cities. Putin explained this by saying that Russian strikes deep into Ukrainian territory are more “powerful, sensitive, and, frankly, more destructive.”
War in pictures. Volunteer work in the Donetsk region
War through the eyes of Medusa readers
Anna (Minsk). When you fly through Russian cities, I don’t feel happy. I think “well, of course, that’s to be expected” and “I hope people start to understand what it means to live in war and demand an end to it.” When it comes down to it according to the Ukrainians, it hurts, because they did not start the war, and they could not influence its beginning, unlike the Russians, who, although minimally, could influence it.
If malicious comments on social networks are generally true, and if they are not bots, then these people, regardless of nationality and aspect, are alien to me, because such a lack of empathy is pathetic and low. This is absolutely disgusting to read. Even if he were a pathetic prisoner sitting on the couch, or a nationalist-minded Ukrainian, his death by drone wouldn’t make me happy – even though I as a person find them very annoying. Any civilian population, if they have not committed war crimes, do not deserve to die for their opinions. If these people came to a foreign land to kill, their death was their own rightful fault, which they had caused themselves.
In my opinion, Ukrainians as a whole show great dignity by not responding with terror to residential buildings, even though they could. Perhaps this is largely the image of the country before the European Union in order to obtain assistance from them, but this is not very important. The main thing is that they do not commit similar atrocities.
It seems to me that the difference between monsters and good people is that good people do not commit terrible acts even towards their enemy. Because someone must adhere to this limit of normalcy, otherwise both parties will become criminals and brutalists, and there will be no difference between them. It is very difficult for Ukrainians to do this when they see what is happening in their homeland. But I admire such Ukrainians, and I hope there will be more of them. Peace to all.