The widow of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has warned there is “no point trying to negotiate” with Vladimir Putin. “Just remember: he will lie,” Yulia Navalnaya told the Munich Security Conference on Friday two days before the first anniversary of her husband’s death. “He will betray,” she said about the Russian president. “He will change the rules at the last moment and force you to play his game. There are only two possible outcomes for any deal with Putin. If he remains in power, he will find a way to break the agreement. If he loses power, the agreement will become meaningless.”
Navalnaya was joined on a panel discussion by the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who said “by helping Ukraine, you’re helping the whole region”. Tikhanovskaya warned if Ukraine did not come out on top after the war, “Putin will be still strong enough to keep his influence on Belarus”. “By putting Ukraine in a strong position during these negotiations, you put also Belarus, Moldova and other countries in a strong position.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said during a meeting with the US vice-president, JD Vance, that his country wants “security guarantees” and a joint US-Ukrainian peace plan before he enters into any talks with Putin to end the war in his country. In their first meeting on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Vance said Washington sought to secure a “a durable, lasting peace, not the kind of peace that’s going to have eastern Europe in conflict just a couple years down the road”. Both men hailed it as a “good conversation” and agreed that further talks were required to see if they could reach a common understanding.
