The head of American diplomacy Anthony Blinken appeared to leave the door ajar to potential negotiations for the borders of Ukraine in the future, hastening to add that it is up to the Ukrainians to decide.

Mr. Blinken, who expressed himself yesterday before his committee Congressstressed that any agreement on peace with Russia must be “fair and sustainable”, that it will respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but “how it will be specifically defined on the ground, we are waiting for the Ukrainians to tell us ».

In doing so, he appeared to acknowledge the fact that Ukrainians would find it difficult to retake all the territories Russia has annexed, especially the Crimean peninsula.

“I think that there are areas in Ukraine that Ukrainians are determined to fight for for them and probably there are areas that will decide that they should try to recover by other means”, he said.

Mr Blinken was specifically responding to a question from Republican politician Chris Stewart about whether the US stands by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s promise to retake Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

The head of American diplomacy, who judges that today the required conditions do not exists for peace negotiations to take place, he insisted that “these are decisions that Ukrainians must make”, as they concern “how they see their future and how that will translate into terms of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence”.

“What we don’t want, for the good of the whole world, is for this to be resolved (…) in a way that will allow the Russians to redeploy, rearm and attack again,” he added.

The US and Western countries do not recognize the annexation of Crimea, nor areas seized by Russian armed forces in eastern Ukraine, where fierce fighting continues.

The US-led alliance that provides military aid to Ukraine assures that it is prepared to continue supporting it as long as necessary and that the Russian military must be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory, but generally tends to be evasive when it comes to Crimea.