Czech foreign minister: Cause of the war in Ukraine is Russian imperialism

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky has issued a guarded stand with regard to President Putin’s response to the US ceasefire proposal. Speaking at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation air base in Keflavik while on a working visit to Iceland, the Czech head of diplomacy said Putin had not yet backed down from a single demand. "Let's not forget that at the start of the invasion he demanded that NATO stop deploying weapons in member states that joined after 1997" Lipavsky said. He stressed that the cause of the war is Russian imperialism, so any ceasefire must be backed by security guarantees for Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he agrees with US proposals to stop the fighting in Ukraine, but any ceasefire would have to deal with the “root causes” of the conflict. These are arguments that Putin used in the run-up to his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, when he said the goal was the  "demilitarisation” of Ukraine and its neutral status.