Kazakhstan urges Putin to freeze Ukraine war; Kremlin says no
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev urged Vladimir Putin to freeze the war in Ukraine and revive the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, during a meeting in the Russian city of Omsk on July 25, AFP and EFE reported. The Kremlin rejected the idea within a day.
"Perhaps the time has come to freeze this conflict and return to the Istanbul 2.0 formula, since meaningful progress was made there," Tokayev told Putin. He added that any ceasefire should come "under the guarantees of major powers, including Russia."
Tokayev was referring to talks held in Istanbul in March and April 2022, weeks after Russia launched its invasion. Moscow says Ukraine came close to signing a peace deal there but abandoned it under pressure from Washington and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, once Russian troops withdrew from around Kyiv. Kyiv's account differs: it says the draft deal would have forced Ukraine into permanent neutrality, barred it from joining NATO, capped its military capabilities, and granted special status to its eastern provinces — terms President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected.
Tokayev also said the war defies easy explanation. "Even we don't fully understand this war's nature," he said, contrasting it with the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, whose roots he called historically self-evident.
Kremlin: freezing the war is "impossible"
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Tokayev's proposal as unworkable, telling Interfax that *"a freeze as such is impossible" given Kyiv's current position, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
"For us, the main condition is achieving our objectives," Peskov said.
Asked how Putin responded to Tokayev in their conversation, Peskov said Putin "explained everything in detail about the special military operation" — the Kremlin's official term for the invasion. Peskov added that Russia's foreign ministry set out its conditions for ending hostilities two years ago, and that "all of this could end today, by the end of the day, if the regime in Kyiv made the right decisions."
Kazakhstan maintains close strategic ties with Russia but has not endorsed the invasion. Tokayev told Putin after the 2022 invasion that Kazakhstan would never recognize Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Despite that balancing act, Kazakhstan has become collateral damage in the war. Drone strikes on the oil terminal at Russia's Novorossiysk port have hit the endpoint of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline, which carries roughly 80% of Kazakhstan's oil exports. Kazakhstan announced this week that it must suspend deliveries through that terminal as a result. Its oil exports have been repeatedly disrupted by Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian pumping stations and on the Novorossiysk loading terminal.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
