After almost a year of aggressive war against Ukraine, Russia has accused the West of a lack of will to negotiate. The West is not open to peace initiatives, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a TV interview on Sunday, the state news agency Tass reported. For this reason, the West will probably not support a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden, said Peskov. Russian troops invaded the neighboring country on February 24, 2022.

From the point of view of the attacked Ukraine and Western countries, there is no basis for negotiation because Russia is sticking to its conquests in Ukraine and wants to overthrow the Kiev leadership. The Belarusian head of state Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly suggested a meeting between the presidents of Russia and the USA. As a location, he suggested the Belarusian capital of Minsk, where a peace plan that had long since failed was negotiated under Franco-German mediation in 2015.

Putin wants to give a speech to the nation in Moscow this Tuesday. Peskov announced that the Kremlin chief would talk about the “military operation” and its effects. The term war is still avoided in Russia. US President Biden is expected to give a speech in Poland’s capital Warsaw, a neighboring country of Ukraine, on the same day.