Zelensky: Only "diplomacy" can end Ukraine war

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Amid a deadlock in negotiations to resolve the war in Ukraine between Kiev and Moscow, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said the crisis can only be resolved through "diplomacy".

Zelensky told a Ukrainian television channel that the end to the war will be through diplomacy. The war "will be bloody, there will be fighting but will only definitively end through diplomacy," he claimed, although it was Kiev that failed to provide an answer to the draft treaty that Russia had proposed.

He further said that there are things that can only be reached at the negotiating table, and what Kiev wants is for "everything to return" as it was before, but "Russia does not want that," as he put it.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said on Wednesday that negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations were halted after Kiev quit the talks.

"The talks are not continuing. Ukraine quit the process of negotiations," he said in reply to a TASS question, adding that Kiev failed to provide an answer to the draft treaty that Russia had proposed.

It is worth mentioning that French President Emmanuel Macron has been mediating between Moscow and Kiev "in vain". Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that his country's authorities would never make certain concessions to Russia.

"We shouldn't look for a way out for Russia. Macron is doing it in vain… Macron's mediation between us was aimed at a certain result, but it fell short of it," Zelensky told Italian broadcaster Rai 1. 

The Ukrainian President claimed that Ukraine had been offered to compromise its sovereignty to "save Putin's face." However, he said Kiev "would never recognize Russia's ownership of Crimea" or the independence of the Lugansk and Donetsk people's republics.