Medvedev says Russia seeks victory, not compromise, in talks with Ukraine
FILE PHOTO: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev talks to Vietnamese General Secretary, President Nguyen Phu Trong (not pictured) during their meeting at the Party's headquarter in Hanoi, Vietnam November 19, 2018. Luong Thai Linh/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that the point of holding peace talks with Ukraine was to ensure a swift and complete Russian victory.
"The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else's delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime," the hawkish deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council said on Telegram.
"That's what the Russian Memorandum published yesterday is about."
Medvedev was referring to a set of Russian demands presented to Ukraine at talks in Istanbul on Monday.
They included handing over more territory, becoming a neutral country, accepting limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and holding new parliamentary and presidential elections.
At the talks, which lasted only an hour, the two sides agreed on a new prisoner-of-war swap and an exchange of 12,000 dead soldiers, but not on the ceasefire that Ukraine and its allies are pressing Russia to accept.
Medvedev added, in an apparent response to Ukraine's weekend strikes on Russian strategic bomber bases, that Moscow would take revenge. "Retribution is inevitable," he said.
"Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance. Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be."
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Gleb Stolyarov and Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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