On Sunday, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy said they’re ready to negotiate to adopt a ‘neutral status’ as part of a ‘peace agreement’ with Moscow, but the third parties should provide formal assurance to the move and put to a referendum. While speaking to Russian journalists in around a one-and-a-half-hour video-call, Mr. Zelenskyy said security assurances and neutrality, non-atomic-weapon state; they’re prepared to go for that. This’s the crucial point.

During an interview that Russian authorities had preventively warned Russian media to avoid from reporting, the Ukrainian leader said his country declined to debate other Moscow demands, like as the demilitarization of Ukraine. He also stated that Moscow had caused damage to the Russian-speaking cities in Ukraine, including Mariupol, Odessa, and Kherson, and said that the destruction was worse than the Chechen–Russian conflict.

New: Ukrainian President Zelensky said he is ready to accept a neutral status as part of a peace deal with Russia but any agreement would have to be put to the Ukrainian people in a referendum. The next round of talks between Russia and Ukraine will be held in Istanbul Tuesday.

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) March 28, 2022

In addition, speaking over a month after the Putin-led military invaded on 24th February, the President of Ukraine said any peace agreement would be unlikely without an end of hostilities and withdrawal of forces. And he ruled out making endeavoring to retaking all Moscow-held areas by force, saying it would lead to a World War III, and stated he wanted to come to an agreement over the Donbass – South-Eastern region of Ukraine seized by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.

How many civilians fled Ukraine?

Furthermore, Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling, and censoring Russian mass media, though, informed Russian media of the need to prevent from publishing the meeting, adding that it would review all news outlets that carried it to regulate the extent of obligation and response measures. However, it didn’t provide a motive for its notice.

Additionally, a journalist from Kommersant, a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in Russia, has recently talked with the Ukrainian President via video link. And reporters from Dozhd and Meduza news outlets, whose sites are blocked in Russian, were also there. However, Meduza published the 90-minute interview, and it could still be accessed from abroad and through alternate internet connections.

Zelenskyy’s interview with the journalists comes as the Russian Armed Forces’ all-out incursion of his country has entered its 2nd month, causing the death number to over a thousand civilians and compelling over 3.8M people to leave the country, according to the United Nations estimates.

In order to put a halt to the Ukraine-Russia war, from Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, world leaders have frequently tried to intercede to explore a diplomatic solution for a cessation of hostilities. The fresh attempt emerged on the 27th of March in a phone-talk between Turkish and Russian leader where both reached a compromise on another round of Moscow-Kyiv discussions in Istanbul, the capital of Turkey.