Photo: EPA-EFE/SZILARD KOSZTICSAK
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is set to propose a plan to freeze the war in Ukraine along the current front lines at a two-day G20 summit that begins in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.
According to unnamed sources briefed on the plan, Erdoğan’s proposal involves postponing discussion of Ukraine’s accession to NATO for at least 10 years “as a concession to Putin”, while also providing Ukraine with military assistance during that time.
Erdoğan’s plan also calls for the creation of a demilitarised zone in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Russia has controlled significant amounts of territory since 2014, and to which Erdoğan will suggest deploying peacekeepers “as an additional guarantee”, according to Bloomberg.
Turkish officials who spoke to Bloomberg said they accepted that the plan would be difficult for Ukraine to accept but also stressed that it was the “most realistic” approach to resolving the conflict.
However, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the plan on Monday as being “unacceptable” to Moscow, and referred instead to a set of conditions outlined by Vladimir Putin in June as Russia’s blueprint for ending the conflict.
Putin’s conditions, which include Kyiv pledging never to join NATO and handing over four of its regions to Moscow in their entirety, have already been flatly rejected by Kyiv.
While Russia is a member of the G20, Vladimir Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes carried out in Ukraine, said in October that he would not attend the summit in Rio de Janeiro so as not to “disrupt the normal work” of the forum. As Brazil recognises the jurisdiction of the ICC, it would have a legal obligation to arrest Putin were he to set foot in the country.
