‘Zero evidence’ Putin is ready for peace talks, Blinken says
Mike Brest
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The Biden administration has seen “zero evidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to engage in legitimate peace negotiations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.
“To the contrary, the evidence is all in the opposite direction,” Blinken said during a visit to Uzbekistan, according to the New York Times, adding, “The real question is whether Russia will get to a point where it is genuinely prepared to end its aggression.”
Blinken is on a weeklong trip to Central Asia, in which he is attempting to convince the leaders of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan not to help Russia with economic aid as Moscow grapples with Western sanctions.
TIMELINE OF RUSSIA’S YEARLONG WAR IN UKRAINE
The secretary of state, in separate meetings on Wednesday with Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and acting Foreign Minister Bakhtiyor Saidov, emphasized the United States’s “support for Uzbekistan’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity,” according to statements from State Department spokesman Ned Price.
Earlier on the trip, he met with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who thanked the U.S. at a press conference for supporting his country’s “independence, territorial integrity, and sovereignty,” which has been a theme of Blinken’s visit.
Some areas of northern Kazakhstan are inhabited mainly by ethnic Russians, and Russian nationalists view it as a territory that should belong to Russia, which has prompted concerns of further Russian aggression and accounts for the repeated mentions of “territorial integrity.”
“One of the things that we’re working on in very practical ways is to demonstrate that the United States is a steadfast partner for countries in Central Asia,” Blinken said on Tuesday along with the Kazakh foreign minister. “Our support for their independence, for their sovereignty, for their territorial integrity is real, but it’s particularly manifested in two ways. One, it’s manifested in helping them in different ways develop the strongest possible capacities for their own security, their growing economic prosperity, and the strength and resilience of their societies.“
Russia, struggling in the war, has sought to acquire weapons from a handful of other countries. The West has threatened and issued sanctions against those involved in helping Moscow conduct its war in Ukraine. Russia has gotten lethal aid from Iran in the form of hundreds of unmanned drones, and North Korea has provided weapons to the paramilitary group known as the Wagner Group, while the U.S. has accused China of considering providing lethal aid but already said Beijing has helped in nonlethal ways.
Administration officials have warned in recent weeks that China is considering providing Russia with lethal aid, though officials have been clear they have not seen Beijing conduct such actions to date. U.S. officials have publicly warned of “consequences” should China cross this line.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to Belarus to meet with President Alexander Lukashenko, a key Putin ally, who allowed for Russian troops to invade Ukraine from his border more than a year ago.
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CIA Director William Burns warned over the weekend Putin is far from giving up on his ambitions and thinks he can outlast Ukraine and its support from the West.
“I think Putin is, right now, entirely too confident of his ability, as I said before, to wear down Ukraine, to grind away, and that’s what he’s giving every evidence that he’s determined to do right now,” he explained, later adding, “You know, a sense, I think, reflecting Putin’s own view, his own belief today that he can make time work for him, that he believes he can grind down the Ukrainians, that he can wear down our European allies, that political fatigue will eventually set in. And in my experience, Putin’s view of Americans, of us, has been that we have attention deficit disorder and we’ll move on to some other issue eventually.”