Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said peace can only be achieved by addressing the root causes of the hostilities

Moscow will not settle for "freezing" the Ukraine conflict without addressing its origins and resolving its underlying causes, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has said.

Russia's demands include Ukraine abandoning its plans to join NATO and adopting a neutral status, accepting restrictions on its armed forces, and formally recognizing Crimea and four former Ukrainian regions as Russian territory. While Crimea voted to join Russia shortly after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson did the same in September 2022.

"As Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said, there can be no 'freeze' of the conflict without addressing the root causes of the crisis," Galuzin told TASS in an interview published on Monday. He argued that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky had "completely lost touch with reality" and was seeking to further "escalate the conflict."

Galuzin condemned what he called "barbaric" attacks on civilian energy infrastructure, including Ukrainian strikes on a Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal in Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, which handles the flow of Kazakh oil to Europe and Asia. CPC shareholders include major Western oil companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell.

Putin has said that Russia was forced to send troops into Ukraine to protect civilians in the largely Russian-speaking Donbass. Moscow also views Ukraine's military cooperation with NATO members as a major security threat.

Last year, Moscow presented conditions for a ceasefire along the current front line, including the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from parts of Russian territory they control, an end to mobilization, and an end to Western military aid to Ukraine. Putin argued that otherwise Ukraine would use a pause in the fighting to regroup and replenish its military. Zelensky has rejected Russia's terms and ruled out recognizing the country's new borders.

Russian officials have repeatedly accused the West of sabotaging the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, which Moscow says could have ended the conflict after just several weeks of fighting.

(RT.com)