USA seeking to balance Ukrainian, Russian demands for truce – Kellogg
US Special Representative for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, has commented on the progress of the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, stating that the United States is calling on the parties to reconcile the previously put forward conditions for a ceasefire.
"We have come to what we call the lists of conditions. The lists of conditions are what it looks like. We believe that this is your end state. And we took the Ukrainian list of conditions, then what is called the Russian list of conditions, they call it a memorandum, and we put them together. We said: okay, how do you put these two documents together to get to the end state? And now we feel pretty confident. We know what it looks like. We know what the end state could look like if we could only get to it. We believe that this is winnable. 'Win' means that you can get to a peace agreement, and that is what you really want to get to," Kellogg said in Brussels during the German Marshall Fund forum.
In his view, the ultimate goal is a comprehensive ceasefire.
"Comprehensive means air, land, sea infrastructure. That's what we want to achieve - a comprehensive ceasefire. We call it a ceasefire in place. A ceasefire in place means the land that you're physically on, that's the land that you're occupying now. And that's fine. Does that mean de jure or de facto? Or just the fact that you're physically on the ground and your soldiers are holding that land. And that's where we want to get to," Kellogg said.
"Everybody works together. There's a level where if you balance that, you can all live with the results of that in the long term. That's what we want. It's something permanent. We don't want the war to start again in three, four or five years," he added.
