Ukraine leader insists on territorial integrity ahead of peace talks

LVIV • With peace talks between Russia and Ukraine set to take place in Turkey, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted on the territorial integrity of his country after earlier suggesting he was ready for a compromise.

Mr Zelensky said in a video address to Ukrainians late on Sunday that in the Istanbul talks this week Kyiv would prioritise the "territorial integrity" of Ukraine. But in comments to Russian journalists earlier in the day, Mr Zelensky took a different tone, saying Ukraine was willing to assume neutral status and compromise over the status of the eastern Donbass region as part of a peace deal.

In the video call that the Kremlin pre-emptively warned Russian media not to report, Mr Zelensky said any agreement must be guaranteed by third parties and put to a referendum. "Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it," he added, speaking in Russian.

Even with talks looming, Ukraine's head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov said Russian President Vladimir Putin was aiming to seize the eastern part of the country. "In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine," he said, referring to the division of Korea after World War II.

Mr Zelensky has urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off Russian forces. In a call with Mr Putin on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to host the talks and called for a ceasefire and better humanitarian conditions, his office said. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators confirmed that in-person talks would take place.

Meanwhile, top American officials sought on Sunday to clarify that the United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, after President Joe Biden said at the end of a speech in Poland the day before that Mr Putin "cannot remain in power".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Mr Biden had simply meant Mr Putin could not be "empowered to wage war" against Ukraine or anywhere else.

After more than four weeks of conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and signalled last Friday it was scaling back its ambitions to focus on securing the Donbass region, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years.

A local leader in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic said on Sunday the Donbass region could soon hold a referendum on joining Russia, just as happened in Crimea after Russia seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia - a vote that much of the world refused to recognise.

Mr Budanov has predicted that Ukraine's army would repel Russian forces by launching a guerilla warfare offensive.

"Then there will be one relevant scenario left for the Russians, how to survive," he said.

Ukraine's foreign ministry spokesman has dismissed talk of any referendum in eastern Ukraine. "All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void and will have no legal validity," Mr Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters.

Moscow says the goals for what Mr Putin calls a "special military operation" include demilitarising and "denazifying" its neighbour.

Ukraine and its Western allies call this a pretext for unprovoked invasion. Ukraine has described previous negotiations, some of which have taken place in Belarus, an ally of Russia, as "very difficult".

REUTERS