Chief of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov said Wednesday that Ukraine was considering the creation of a security zone along its 1991 border with Russia that would cover the territory of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles)
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd February, 2023) Chief of the Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov said Wednesday that Ukraine was considering the creation of a security zone along its 1991 border with Russia that would cover the territory of up to 100 kilometers (62 miles).
"We must create conditions for a security zone around our border. How to achieve this: there are many options," Budanov said in an interview with Forbes.ua, while answering a question about whether Ukrainian troops would go further if they reached the 1991 borders with Russia.
Budanov noted that it could be a demilitarized zone with "normal control so that there would be time to react." According to him. the width of such a zone could be 100 kilometers, but 40 kilometers would also be "more or less normal."
"So that you get my logic right. Whether we should go further is not a question for me, but creating a security zone around the border is a necessity. There are many options on how to achieve this goal," Budanov added, noting that the decision would be up to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In December 2022, Zelenskyy said that the only way to end hostilities in Ukraine was for Russia to withdraw its troops to the 1991 borders. A RIA Novosti source in Moscow commenting on the Ukrainian leader's words said that if Zelenskyy wanted to return to 1991, he should not talk about borders, but about neutral and non-aligned status, brotherly relations with Russia, in other words everything that had been destroyed by Kiev and led to the crisis.
