Kazakh President Kasim Khomart Tokayev has put the possibility of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine back on the table Wednesday during a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.
«As for Ukraine, I believe that the time has come for a joint collective search for a formula for peace. Any war ends with negotiations. Every opportunity should be used to achieve at least a truce,» he said, as reported by the Tengrinews news portal.
Thus, Tokayev emphasized, within the framework of a meeting of the CSTO, a group led by Russia together with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, that the round of negotiations in Istanbul «gave hope» for the parties to continue the dialogue.
«We must not allow the brotherly peoples of Russia and Ukraine to be separated for tens or hundreds of years with unresolved mutual grievances,» the president of Kazakhstan has insisted from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, during the CSTO meeting.
Tokayev’s distancing from Russia’s line of argument has been going on practically since the early stages of the war. Despite being a regional ally of Moscow, Astana declared in early March that it was neutral in the war in Eastern Europe.
Already at that time, Tokayev contacted both Zelenski and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to stress the need to reach an agreement between the parties that would put an end to a conflict then in the making, and which almost nine months later shows no signs of coming to an end.
