Belarus’s Lukashenko calls for peace talks between Russia and ‘denazified’ Ukraine

Moscow and Kyiv should sit down at the negotiating table and begin talks to end the war as Ukraine has already been “denazified”, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with Russian state television channel Rossiya 1 on Sunday.

Referencing the claim used repeatedly by Vladimir Putin to justify his decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbour in February 2022, Lukashenko claimed that only a “few rabid Nazis” remained in Ukraine and called on both countries to resume negotiations, which broke down in the opening months of the war.

“Let's sit down at the negotiating table and end this fight. Neither the Ukrainian people, nor the Russians, nor the Belarusians need it”, Lukashenko said, claiming that Russia’s goals had been “achieved”.

While Lukashenko has repeatedly called on Moscow and Kyiv to begin peace talks in recent months, Kremlin officials continue to use rhetoric about alleged Nazism in Ukraine in official statements. In December, Putin said that the “issue of denazification” of Ukraine was “still relevant”.

Lukashenko’s latest calls for talks were evidence that Putin was “begging for negotiations” to end the war, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation Andriy Kovalenko said.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, denied reports that the ongoing Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region had derailed secret peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, telling journalists on Sunday that there was “nothing to derail”.

“There have been and are no direct or indirect negotiations between Russia and the Kiev regime on the security of civilian critical infrastructure facilities”, Zakharova said following reports by The Washington Post that Qatar had been facilitating talks on a partial ceasefire between the two countries in recent weeks.

Lukashenko claimed that the AFU’s incursion into Russian territory was intended to “raise the stakes” in the war and “push Russia into asymmetric actions”, including using nuclear weapons.