Ukraine denied on Tuesday (local time) that it was under Western pressure to negotiate with Russia, doubling down on its insistence that talks could take place only if Russia relinquishes all occupied territory.
The remarks came days after a high profile Washington Post report that the United States had encouraged Kyiv to signal willingness for talks. It also coincided with US mid-term elections that could test Western support for Ukraine.
In an overnight address before he was due to address world leaders at a climate summit, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy recited what he called Ukraine's "completely understandable conditions" for peace talks.
"Once again - restoration of territorial integrity, respect for the UN Charter, compensation for all damages caused by the war, punishment of every war criminal and guarantees that this will not happen again."
Ukraine had repeatedly proposed such talks, but "we always received insane Russian responses with new terrorist attacks, shelling or blackmail", Zelenskiy said.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated Moscow's position that it is open to talks but that Kyiv was refusing them. Moscow has repeatedly said it will not negotiate over territory it claims to have annexed from Ukraine.
Zelenskiy's senior adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said it was absurd to suggest that Western countries would push Kyiv to negotiate on Moscow's terms, as they were the ones supplying Ukraine with the weapons to drive Russian forces off its land.
"Ukraine receives from its partners, first of all from the United States, quite effective weapons," he said in an interview with Radio Liberty. "We are pushing the Russian army out of territory. And against this background, forcing us to the negotiation process, and in fact to recognise the ultimatum of the Russian Federation, is nonsense! And no one will do that."
He said there was "no coercion" in Ukraine's relationship with Washington, and suggestions the West was pushing Ukraine to negotiate were part of Russia's "information programme", though he did not directly rebut the Washington Post report.
Since Russia announced the annexation of Ukrainian territory at the end of September, Zelenskiy has decreed that Kyiv would never negotiate with Moscow as long as Vladimir Putin remains Russian president. Podolyak has repeated that stance in recent days, although Zelenskiy did not mention Putin in his speech.
OFFENSIVE
Ukrainian forces have been on the offensive in recent months, while Russia is regrouping to defend areas of Ukraine it still occupies, having called up hundreds of thousands of reservists over the past month.
Russia has been evacuating civilians from occupied areas, especially from southern Ukraine's Kherson region, in an operation Kyiv says includes forced deportations, a war crime. Moscow says it is taking people to safety.
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The next big battle is expected to be over a Russian-controlled pocket of land on the west bank of the Dnipro River, which includes Kherson city, the only regional capital Russia has captured since its invasion in February.
Britain's Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday Russia was preparing new fortified lines deep inside territory it controls "to forestall any rapid Ukrainian advances in the event of breakthroughs".
This included installing concrete barriers known as "dragon's teeth" to stop tanks, including near Mariupol in the south to help safeguard Russia's "land bridge" to occupied Crimea even if Moscow loses other territory.
On Monday, a source confirmed that White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had held talks with Russian officials to avert escalation of the conflict, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Kremlin has declined to comment.
The White House did not deny the talks but says it will make no diplomatic moves about Ukraine without Kyiv's involvement.
"We reserve the right to speak directly at senior levels about issues of concern to the United States. That has happened over the course of the past few months. Our conversations have focused only on ... risk reduction and the US-Russia relationship," White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said.
The United States was holding mid-term elections for Congress on Tuesday. Although most candidates from both parties support Ukraine, some right-wing Republican candidates have criticised the cost of US military aid.
Jean-Pierre said US support for Ukraine would be "unflinching and unwavering" regardless of the vote's outcome.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign policy committee, said a Republican victory "will not in any way impact on support for Ukraine".
"We highly value the fact that we have bipartisan support," he said. "Whoever wins these elections, this will not have any negative influence. On the contrary, we expect that support for Ukraine will increase."
On Monday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally who heads the Wagner private military company fighting in Ukraine, acknowledged for the first time that Russia had intervened in US elections, and said it would do so again.
"We have interfered, we are interfering and we will continue to interfere," he said on Facebook.
US prosecutors accuse Prigozhin of leading a Russian internet "troll farm" that helped back former president Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Trump denies his campaign coordinated with the Russians.
