The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi rejected the possibility of talks with Russia in Minsk, as the territory of Belarus is used in the war against Ukraine.
In a video address, he noted that Ukraine has never chosen Minsk as a platform for negotiations. The Belarusians did not do that either. The decision was under the leadership of the Russian Federation.
"And again now we’ve got an offer to meet In Belarus. Four days ago cruise missiles, planes, helicopters, equipment left Belarus. They hit our houses, beat our lives. Now you’re using heavy equipment. And it's a terrible deja vu. You know, Kyiv was attacked at four in the morning. At four in the morning! Someone has such a sense of humor as in 1941. And you slept, Belarusian brothers. And we woke up. But you are still asleep, and we are not going to bed from now on because we are fighting. We are fighting for our country, for our freedom because we have every right to do so," the President said.
He added that negotiations in Minsk would be possible if there were no aggressive actions from the territory of Belarus.
"When you were neutral, we were in Minsk. At the moment you have not made your main choice, and it is ahead, and it should depend only on you, on the people of Belarus. That is why we now say “No” to Minsk. The meeting place may be other cities, of course, we want peace, we want to meet, we want an end to the war. Warsaw, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Baku - all these we have offered to the Russian side. Any other city in a country whose territory is not launching rockets at us suits us,” the ead of state added.
It will be recalled that this morning the media of the occupying country wrote that the negotiators from Russia had arrived in Belarus for talks with Ukraine and they were ready to do so in Gomel.
Minsk was used as a negotiating platform in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. At the same time, despite the agreements signed, the Russians did not abide by the Minsk agreements.