Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports

Negotiators representing the Ukrainian government on Tuesday offered up the country’s freedom to associate with Western military alliance and pledged military neutrality in exchange for a guarantee of peace with belligerent Russia.

The offer came as officials from both sides of the conflict met in Turkey to reset their terms for ending the one month war which has reduced key Ukrainian cities to rubbles at high cost of human tolls on both sides.

The peace delegations from both countries had arrived Turkey with offers that would create a new pathway for stronger and more binding peace deal between the two neighboring countries currently wasting the lives of their soldiers over geopolitical hegemony.

Russian delegation to the peace talks also announced reduction in the force of their attacks on Ukraine; and while they were specific on scaling back aggression in two cities, they actually escalated assault on other cities and facilities inside Ukraine.

Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin said Russia had decided to scale down fighting near Kyiv and Chernihiv to create the conditions for dialog.

The Ukrainian delegates also hinted the country’s willingness to cede more of its territories to Russia which has been struggling to hold captured Ukrainian territories in the face of daunting local resistance. The territories offered up were already in dispute before the invasion of Ukraine.

Russian military forces had invaded Ukraine on February 24 and have sustained heavy artillery assault on cities and key infrastructure, forcing the citizens on mass exodus into refugee camps hurriedly set up in neighboring Poland, Hungary and Romania.

 Ukrainian President, Volodymir Zelensky had taken weak position since the outset of the war, even dismissing early warning from the United States that Russia which had lined up heavy military hardware along shared borders was intent on invading Ukraine. And despite the spirited resistance by the Ukrainians, Zelensky is visibly swinging between seeking help from Western countries and seeking peace with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Unfortunately, President Putin is reportedly ignoring olive branches from Zelensky with imperial arrogance and instead threatens him with more military force.

Less than five weeks since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than 3.9 million refugees have been forced to flee the country, making this the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

However, while the rich and powerful Western nations slam economic and diplomatic sanctions of Russia for invading Ukraine, some countries like Turkey, Israel and France have remained tireless in pushing for ceasefire.

In Tuesday’s negotiations hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Russia promised to drastically scale down its military operations around Kyiv and the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, and Ukrainian negotiators proposed a status under which their country would not join alliances or host bases of foreign troops, but would have its security guaranteed in terms similar to “Article 5,” the collective defense clause of NATO.

They identified Israel and NATO members Canada, Poland and Turkey as countries that could help provide such guarantees. The proposals were the most detailed and concrete that Ukraine has aired publicly.

The Ukrainian negotiators told reporters in Istanbul that the proposals would include a 15-year consultation period on the status of Russian-annexed Crimea, and could come into force only in the event of a complete ceasefire.

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, David Arahamiya, said his side presented an official proposal for a new system of security guarantees which, he said, would not apply to Crimea, which Russia considers its territory, and the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

“We insist that it be an international treaty signed by all security guarantors who ratify,” he said. “We want it to be an international mechanism of concrete security guarantees for Ukraine.”

Ahead of the talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country was prepared to declare its neutrality, as Moscow has demanded, and was open to compromise over the contested eastern region of Donbas.

In response, Russia appeared to be concentrating more on Donbas, the predominantly Russian-speaking region where Moscow-backed rebels have been waging a separatist war for eight years, the official said.

In a further indication of that shift, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday that “liberating Donbas” was Moscow’s main military goal.

Shoigu told top military officials that Russia had largely completed the first stage of its operation and was shifting to “the main goal of the liberation of Donbas.”

Top Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said he would examine the Ukrainian proposals and report on them to President Vladimir Putin.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the warring nations had a “historic responsibility” to stop the fighting.

“We believe that there will be no losers in a just peace,” Erdogan said as the talks began in Istanbul. “Prolonging the conflict is not in anyone’s interest.”