Ukraine confides in Israeli intervention, denies Bennett exhorted buckling under Russia
Ukraine/JERUSALEM: Ukraine voiced hope on Saturday for
positive results from Israel’s bid to broker peace with Russia, denying a media
report that suggested Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had tried to nudge
Kyiv into caving to Moscow’s demands.
Bennett, acting at Ukraine’s behest, held a three-hour
Kremlin meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last Saturday. He has
since spoken twice with Putin by phone and four times with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky, officials say.
“I believe (Bennett) can play an important role, because
Israel is a country with a lot of history and parallels (to our situation), as
well as having a large migration of Jews from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus,”
Zelensky said in a briefing.
Earlier on Saturday, a top Ukrainian adviser denied a report
carried by Israel’s Walla news, the Jerusalem Post, and US news site Axios that
had suggested, citing an unidentified Ukrainian official, that Bennett had
urged Ukraine to give in to Russia.
Israel, “just as other conditional intermediary countries,
does NOT offer Ukraine to agree to any demands of the Russian Federation,” the
adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, tweeted. “This is impossible for military &
political reasons. On the contrary, Israel urges Russia to assess the events
more adequately.”
A senior Israeli official, who requested anonymity due to
the sensitivity of the matter, called the report “patently false.”
“At no point did Prime Minister Bennett advise President
Zelenskiy to take a deal from Putin — because no such deal was offered to
Israel for us to be able to do so,” the official said.
Moscow has said little about Bennett’s mediation efforts. It
has issued terms including that Ukraine recognizes Crimea as a Russian and
Russian-backed breakaway area as an independent. Kyiv says it will not cede any
territory.
One official briefed on the mediation, and who spoke to
Reuters on condition of anonymity, envisaged a potential situation where the
warring countries “put it (the recognition issue) on the side, perhaps for 10
or 15 years.”
As a possible precedent, the official cited the
Soviet-Japanese peace pact of 1956 that left the status of disputed islands
unresolved. It was not immediately clear if the remarks reflected wider
thinking in Kyiv or Moscow.
Zelensky said he would be open to peace talks in Jerusalem,
and anticipated Israel giving Ukraine security guarantees.
“I said to (Bennett) that at present it’s not constructive
to hold meetings in Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus. These are not the places where
we (the leaders of the involved countries) can agree to stop the war... Do I
consider Israel, Jerusalem in particular, to be such a place? I think the
answer is yes.”
The crisis diplomacy, coordinated with the United States,
Germany, and France, has been a high-wire act for Bennett.
He has left it to his foreign minister to condemn the
Russian invasion in Israel’s name. That, said another official, was meant to
keep Putin’s door open to the Israeli prime minister.
“Power in Russia is pooled entirely around this one man.
It’s highly personal. Israel has managed relations with Russia through
leader-to-leader contacts, and that requires avoiding soundbites that might
stir up an ill will,” the official said.
Citing the time that Putin and Zelenskiy have invested in
speaking to — and through — Bennett, a senior official in Israel’s Foreign
Ministry, Simona Halperin, said in a radio interview on Thursday the mediation
efforts “certainly, certainly have a chance of succeeding.” source : arabnews
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