Kremlin says West not willing to engage in Ukraine peace efforts

Reuters :
The Kremlin on Sunday said that Western countries have not yet shown they are open or willing to engage in peaceful initiatives to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
“So far, there is no readiness or openness for peace initiatives on the part of the collective West,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency.
The Kremlin on Sunday cast the United States was a “major provocateur” of international tensions for condoning attacks on Crimea, warning that the remarks about the peninsula underscored the depth of disagreement between the two countries.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to comments by US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland who said the United States considers that Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, should be demilitarised and that Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the peninsula.
“Nuland belongs to a very broad camp of the most aggressive ‘hawks’ in American politics. This is a point of view we know well,” Peskov said in comments published by the TASS news agency.
Russia says Western countries have not yet shown any “openness” to engage in peaceful initiatives to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials urge members of the US Congress to press the Biden administration to send F-16s, saying the fighter jets would boost Ukraine’s ability to hit Russian missile units with US-made rockets.
Russia’s US ambassador accused the United States of trying to justify its own actions in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine with allegations of Russian crimes against humanity, TASS state news agency said on Sunday.
“We regard such insinuations as an unprecedented attempt to demonise Russia in the framework of the hybrid war unleashed against us,” Ambassador Anatoly Antonov was quoted as saying.
“There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks by Washington is to justify its own actions to fuel the Ukrainian crisis.”
France said on Sunday it will begin delivering the armoured vehicles it has promised Ukraine in its war against Russia by next weekend. Earlier in the day, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference that the West must provide more military aid to Ukraine and speed up its delivery.
Estonia’s prime minister on Sunday insisted that once the war in Ukraine ends, Russia must be brought to justice for war crimes as well as for the decision to invade its neighbor if it is to have any chance of developing a normal relationship with the West.
Kaja Kallas, whose small Baltic country is the biggest per-capita contributor of military aid to Ukraine, told The Associated Press that the conflict cannot end with a peace deal that carves up the country and doesn’t hold Moscow to account.