The Russian president mentioned the hypothesis of a truce proposed by his French counterpart during the sports competition from July 26 to August 11, while not excluding the creation of a “security zone”, without specifying its nature. , nor its size.
Re-elected President of Russia on Sunday evening, Vladimir Putin said on Sunday “ready to consider all questions”, referring to the proposal for a truce in fighting in Ukraine during the Paris Olympic Games this summer, made on Saturday by French President Emmanuel Macron.
“We will always proceed from the interests of the Russian Federation and the situation in the military contact zone”, the Russian president said on Sunday during a speech to the press at his campaign headquarters.
“I have always said, and I repeat, that we are in favor of peaceful negotiations, but not because the enemy is running out of ammunition. But we are for it, if they really want to build peaceful and good neighborly relations between the two states in the long term, instead of taking a break of a year and a half or two years to rearm“added Vladimir Putin.
“We will be forced, at some point, to create a security zone, which will be quite difficult, and to use the weapons that the enemy uses“, he declared, without specifying the extent of this area, nor the weapons mentioned.
Paris proposal
Questioned by several journalists about a possible ceasefire proposal during the Olympic Games (from July 26 to August 11) during an interview given to several Ukrainian media (1+1, We are Ukraine, United News, Telemarathon) , President Emmanuel Macron responded that “will be asked, yes”.
As is traditional before each Olympics, France, as host country, presented a resolution on the truce to the United Nations for a vote, adopted on November 21, 2023 with 118 votes in favor, none against, and two abstentions.
Asked about the possibility of Russian athletes participating under a neutral banner, the French president recalled that “the choice that was made is that Russia, as a country, is not present and that the flag is not present, but that athletes can, in fact, be present”.
The IOC requires Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in the next Paris Olympic Games under a neutral banner – a system forged during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics for Serbs and Montenegrins hit by international sanctions.
While calling for a ceasefire, Emmanuel Macron recently pledged that France would join other European powers in strengthening military support for Ukraineand insisted that Russia should not be allowed to win the war.
