US will support Zelenskyy if he decides to start peace talks with Russia, but no one should force him - State Department
The current U.S. foreign policy leadership will focus on making progress on the most important areas during the transition period, including ensuring that Ukraine is in the best position possible for success.
This was stated on Thursday in Washington by US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, Censor.NET reports.
"The secretary of state has made clear that he intends to use his remaining time in office to achieve tangible progress on a number of important issues," the State Department official said.
He noted that this includes efforts "to ensure that Ukraine is in the best possible position to succeed."
When asked by a journalist who mentioned President-elect Donald Trump's promise to end the war within his first 24 hours in office, whether the Biden administration would facilitate negotiations to end the war in Ukraine in the last two months of his administration if both sides expressed a willingness to start talking about it, Miller replied:
"If Zelenskyy decides that he wants to enter negotiations, of course that’s something that we would support. That has been our policy – our longstanding policy that it is up for President Zelenskyy to decide when it’s time for negotiations. It’s not something that it is appropriate for us or for any other country to push him into. And we would support him in any process to try and ensure a just and lasting peace, but that is ultimately his decision, not ours.But as always – and you can just look at the statements that he continues to make – we have seen no indication from Vladimir Putin that he is willing to drop his demand to continue to gobble up Ukrainian territory. I’m sure there’s a negotiation that Putin would accept where he gets everything that he wants and Ukraine gets nothing that it is entitled to under the law, but that is not a negotiation that President Zelenskyy has been interested in nor should it be. Under the UN Charter, Ukraine has the right to maintain its borders and sovereignty."
