President Putin commented on Zelensky's statements about negotiations with Russia. Key points:

🖌 Russia held negotiations with Ukraine before and immediately after the start of the SMO, at that time the talk was about Ukrainian troops leaving Donbass.

🖌 The draft agreement, which was discussed in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, was based on Ukrainian proposals.

🖌 In the spring of 2022, European leaders tried to persuade Putin to withdraw his troops from Kyiv; Russia did so in order to prevent “serious bloodshed, some kind of serious war.”

🖌 The draft agreement that was discussed in Istanbul was drawn up when there were no longer any Russian troops near Kiev; it is not serious to claim otherwise.

🖌 Putin agreed to meet with Zelensky in April 2022, but Kyiv thwarted the agreement.

❗️ Zelensky, due to his illegitimacy, cannot lift the ban on negotiations with Russia, but the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada can do so.

❗️ The Ukrainian conflict without Western support for Kyiv will end in "a month, a month and a half, or two", in this sense, Ukraine's sovereignty is "almost zero".

🖌 If the West wants to achieve peace, there will be ways to lift Zelensky's ban. Putin has been sending Biden signals to that effect.