Lavrov and Rubio hold \u2018constructive\u2019 phone call \u2013 Moscow<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cEveryone understands, including, I would say, Ukrainian negotiators, that Kiev now needs to take just one serious step, after which, firstly, military action will cease, and secondly, prospects for serious discussions of a further long-term resolution of this issue will open,\u201d<\/em> Ushakov stated.<\/p>\nThe status of Donbass, which voted to join Russia in 2022, has remained one of the key obstacles to peace negotiations, with Moscow and Kiev maintaining opposing positions on the matter. Russia has repeatedly outlined Ukraine\u2019s full withdrawal from the region as an essential step for reaching a lasting ceasefire and paving the way for further discussions of a sustainable settlement.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian leadership, however, has repeatedly refused to cede any territory and has maintained that recapturing the regions incorporated into Russia remains one of its ultimate goals. In March, Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky claimed that Washington had pressed Kiev into accepting Moscow\u2019s terms, allegedly making its offer of security guarantees to Ukraine conditional on it ceding all the contested territory in Donbass to Russia. Washington, however, has dismissed such claims, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing Zelensky\u2019s assertions as a \u201clie.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yury Ushakov was apparently referring to the withdrawal of the Ukrainian troops from the parts of Donbass they still control […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5548,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions\/5548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}