"The Russian demands fall into two categories. The first four demands are, according to Mr. Kalin, not too difficult for Ukraine to meet. Chief among them is an acceptance by Ukraine that it should be neutral and should not apply to join Nato. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has already conceded this," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told BBC, Report informs.
"There are other demands in this category which mostly seem to be face-saving elements for the Russian side. Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure it wasn't a threat to Russia. There would have to be protection for the Russian language in Ukraine. And there is something called de-Nazification. This is deeply offensive to Mr. Zelensky, who is himself Jewish and some of whose relatives died in the Holocaust, but the Turkish side believes it will be easy enough for Mr. Zelensky to accept. Mr. Zelensky has already said he's prepared to meet the Russian president and negotiate with him one-to-one," he said.
Although Mr. Kalin didn't go into detail, the assumption is that Russia will demand that the Ukrainian government should give up territory in eastern Ukraine. That will be deeply contentious. The other assumption is that Russia will require that Ukraine should formally accept that Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, does indeed now belong to Russia. If this is the case, it will be a bitter pill for Ukraine to swallow:
"Nevertheless, it is a fait accompli, even though Russia has no legal right to own Crimea and actually signed an international treaty, after the fall of Communism but before Vladimir Putin came to power, accepting that Crimea was part of Ukraine. Still, President Putin's demands are not as harsh as some people feared, and they scarcely seem to be worth all the violence, bloodshed, and destruction which Russia has visited on Ukraine. A peace deal could take a long time to sort out, even if a ceasefire stops the bloodshed in the meantime."