On Friday, the United States and the Netherlands announce new arms deliveries to Ukraine. This caused criticism from the Russian ambassador in Washington. In an interview, Anatoly Antonov urges the West to negotiate.
In an interview, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, described the situation in Ukraine as “extremely alarming”. “We are not fighting against Ukrainians in Ukraine, but against the collective West,” the Russian state news agency TASS quotes the 67-year-old diplomat, who has represented the interests of the Kremlin in the US capital Washington since 2017, as saying. The West’s goal is “to undermine the pillars of the Russian state and to deplete all of Russia’s economic and military resources until Russia no longer has a chance to negotiate on an equal footing on the international stage.”
Above all, Antonov is therefore urging the US government to negotiate a ceasefire. “Our so-called partners are pursuing the wrong policy because they believe that the problem can only be solved on the battlefield,” the Russian ambassador criticized, among other things, new arms deliveries from the United States and the Netherlands to Ukraine. In fact, however, a negotiated solution must be sought.
The US Department of Defense announced a new aid package for Ukraine on Friday. These include 90 refurbished Soviet-designed T-72 main battle tanks provided by the USA and the Netherlands. In the eyes of Antonov, however, military support will not change anything in the outcome of the fighting. “We have no other choice and we have no doubt that we will fight for the right cause and win,” the diplomat was quoted as saying.
Antonov’s comments echo a number of senior Kremlin officials who have openly raised the issue of ceasefire talks in recent weeks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, among others, offered a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit (November 15-16) in Indonesia – but only if the US offered an offer to talk submit. According to Russian sources, this has not happened so far.
According to Western military observers, however, the Kremlin is not interested in genuine negotiations and will only accept a ceasefire, if at all, on its own terms. The independent Russian exile medium Meduza also claims to have learned from those close to the Kremlin that Moscow is playing a double game with its offers of talks. According to this, the Kremlin is primarily aiming for a pause in the fighting to give its weakened troops a break. In the spring, the Russian army should then start a new major offensive, it is said. She wants to use the time until then to train hundreds of thousands of conscripts and other recruits.
The Ukrainian leadership is also currently rejecting ceasefire negotiations. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared in early October after Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions that he would not start talks as long as Vladimir Putin is Russian President. Earlier talks in Istanbul ended prematurely after Russian war crimes were exposed in Bucha.
