Key facts
- Zelensky said the proposal reached him through US negotiators and that he explained his position to them.
- Zelensky said Ukraine gave the US side a list of seven or eight blockaded settlements where civilians remain.
- Zelensky said Russia proposed no humanitarian operation for those settlements, naming villages near Oleshky.
- Presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said an earlier Russian-proposed operation in Oleshky was used to rotate troops.
- Ukraine's General Staff said its forces continue operating against Russian infantry groups trying to infiltrate Kostiantynivka.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on November 13 that a Russian proposal to set up a temporary humanitarian mission in Kostiantynivka would give Russian forces a way into the eastern Ukrainian city. Speaking to journalists, he called the idea an absolutely primitive move and said that otherwise Russia has no way of taking the city.
Zelensky said US negotiators brought him the proposal and that he told them the people in Kostiantynivka are exclusively Ukrainian citizens and that fighting is taking place inside the city. He said the envoys responded that they understood.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made the proposal at a meeting with US special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in Moscow on November 12, as fighting continued inside Kostiantynivka. Zelensky said a ceasefire could let Russian troops reposition to more advantageous positions in and around the city.
Zelensky said Ukraine had given the US side a list of seven or eight blockaded settlements where civilians, including children, remain, such as villages near Oleshky, and that Russia proposed no humanitarian operation for any of them. He said that after Kostiantynivka come Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and that giving up the city would be followed by moves on other cities in Donbas.
Ukraine has rejected Russian claims that Moscow controls Kostiantynivka. The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces continue operating against Russian infantry groups attempting to infiltrate the town.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn questioned Moscow's motives, pointing to an earlier Russian-proposed humanitarian operation in Oleshky, in Kherson Oblast, which he said was used to rotate troops and bring additional personnel into the area under the cover of a temporary ceasefire.