Zelenskyy: Horror in Bucha, Borodianka, and Mariupol making Ukraine lose faith in negotiations with Russia

Denys Karlovskyi – Thursday, 14 April 2022, 22:01

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine is convinced that it is increasingly less likely that peace talks with Russia will yield any results after the horrible crimes Russian occupying troops committed in Mariupol and the towns and villages of the Kyiv region.

Source: Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview for BBC

According to Zelenskyy: "Bucha has made us reconsider [the likelihood of successful peace talks with Russia].

It’s not me. It’s Russia. It will no longer have much of a chance to talk to us."

Details: Zelenskyy said that he experienced the full spectrum of human feelings when he visited the sites of Russian war crimes in Bucha. He added that by the end of that day he felt nothing but hatred for Russian soldiers.

In the interview, Zelenskyy called all of the Russian political and military leadership, from Putin at the top down to the rank and file, war criminals.

Zelenskyy explained that Russian occupiers killed and tortured tens of thousands of people in Mariupol. Even more people were forcibly taken to remote regions of Russia and were stripped of their Ukrainian citizenship.

Background:

• On 13 April Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said that investigators at the International Criminal Court had grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine.
• Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, said that negotiations with Russia must continue at least in order to avoid further horrors like those in Bucha and Kramatorsk.
• The Turkish government hopes to facilitate a personal meeting between the Presidents of Ukraine and Russia, but the Kremlin is demanding that a written agreement be reached first.

On 9 April Mykhailo Podoliak, Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that President Zelenskyy will meet with Putin if Ukrainian troops are victorious in the battles expected to take place in the east of Ukraine. President Zelenskyy reiterated this idea, noting that the loss of Mariupol and the Donbas region would weaken Ukraine’s negotiating position; therefore, the government is prepared for a decisive fight before any agreement is reached.