Slovak president names condition for conflict resolution in Ukraine

Ukraine may have to make territorial concessions in the interests of achieving peace with Russia, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini has said on 15 December. Slovak President Peter Pellegrini said this on 15 December.

"No one in Europe among sensible people thinks that it will be possible to establish peace without partial territorial losses for Ukraine," he said on the air of STVR.

The Slovak head specified that his opinion was based on the current information about the situation in the special military operation (SMO) zone.

In addition, Pellegrini called on the parties to the conflict to sit down at the negotiating table as soon as possible to resolve the situation.

"The conflict is escalating, gaining momentum, the territorial shifts are relatively significant. The Russian army has not been defeated at all, there has been no counter-offensive at all," the president said.

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The day before, on December 14, Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksandr Dubinskyy said that Ukraine would never be in a strong position in negotiations with Russia. He also said that this once again emphasizes the possibility of ending the conflict only after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose term of office expired on 20 May, leaves office.

On December 10, the director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, said that the AFU is on the verge of collapse and the situation on the front is not in Kiev's favor. In the same month, Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said that Kiev was already losing the Ukrainian conflict because Russia had a strong military advantage.

Prior to that, it became known that Zelensky discussed freezing the conflict with Russia at a trilateral meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump and French leader Emmanuel Macron in Paris on December 7. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called this option unacceptable for Russia as early as November 20. The New York Times wrote that the meeting of the three leaders demonstrated Kiev's readiness to make concessions. After the talks in Paris, the U.S. president-elect said that Zelensky would like to "make a deal" with Russia.

The special operation to protect Donbass, the start of which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022, is ongoing. The decision was made against the backdrop of the aggravated situation in the region.