US not ruling out territory trade in Ukraine war
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John Kirby says the US government is exclusively focused on "making sure that Ukraine has what it needs to be successful on that battlefield."
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President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House on September 21, 2023. (AP)
Washington does not rule out the notion of Ukraine selling territory for peace with Russia, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday.
After US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met in the White House, Kirby was asked if he thought that there was no way to settle the conflict unless Ukraine ceded land to Russia.
"I mean, that is going to be up to him," he said, referring to Zelensky.
Kirby stated that the US government is exclusively focused on "making sure that Ukraine has what it needs to be successful on that battlefield,” rather than engaging in the "game" of devising alternate scenarios and thinking about "convincing Zelensky to trade this for that."
“If and when and how this war ends, it is got to be in a way that... Zelensky and the Ukrainian people can accept. He gets to decide the conditions. He gets to decide the circumstances. And if there is trade space, he gets to decide what that trade space is,” he added.
Kirby also divulged that the US President wanted to see the end of the war "as soon as possible" but emphasized that Kiev was not receiving guidance from the White House on how peace talks should proceed.
During his discussion with Zelensky in the Oval Office, Biden pledged an additional $8 billion in military support to Ukraine. He also complimented the Ukrainian leader for providing him with his strategy for "victory" over Russia.
The specifics have not been made public, but Kirby stated that the plan comprises "initiatives, steps, and objectives" that Zelensky believes would end the war and deter Russia.
In June, Vladimir Putin said Moscow would stop fighting and start talks with Ukraine if Kiev formally renounced NATO membership and withdrew from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as from Kherson and Zaporozhye.
At the time, Zelensky said that Putin's proposal for Ukraine echoed Russia's previous propositions, labeling it an "ultimatum", something Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied and instead clarified was in fact, a sincere attempt at initiating peace negotiations.
Victory in Ukraine only way to solve West's interference: Lavrov
Russia will emerge victorious in Ukraine because that is the only language that the West understands, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Lavrov, who flew to New York to participate in the 79th plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), spoke to the Russian news agency TASS before his departure from Moscow.
"Wherever the West infiltrates to 'fix' a crisis things only get much worse," the top Russian diplomat explained.
He said that "thousands of victims, devastation and socio-economic problems follow," follow Western interference.
"In my years of work in the international arena, there has not been a single case of the West’s intervention resulting in anything good," he added.
"And now we’re seeing the same thing with Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Russia's foreign affairs minister underlined.
He said that the only solution to the problem in Ukraine is "victory".
According to Lavrov, the collective West seeks to "subjugate" the globe to its "rules-based international order."
Yet, he said that no one has ever explained what these "rules" might be, aside from allowing the United States to do what it wants in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, the Balkans, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the South China Sea.
"They have tried to act everywhere like a hegemon, like an elephant in a china shop," Lavrov underscored.
