KIEV, Oct 01 (TASS/AP/ AFP): Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said on Friday that Kiev is ready for settlement talks with Moscow, but with a Russian president other than Vladimir Putin.
"We are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another Russian president," he said in a video address posted on his Telegram channel.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Kiev to immediately cease hostilities and return to the negotiating table.
"We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire, all hostilities, to stop the war that Kiev started back in 2014, and to return back to the negotiating table," Putin said, speaking during the ceremony of signing of treaties on accession of four new territories.
Putin noted that Russia repeatedly stated its readiness for negotiations.
Russia vetoes UN
resolution calling
referendums illegal
Russia vetoed a U.N. resolution Friday that would have condemned its referendums in four Ukrainian regions as illegal, declared them invalid and urged all countries not to recognize any annexation of the territory claimed by Moscow.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 10-1 with China, India, Brazil and Gabon abstaining.
The resolution would also have demanded an immediate halt to Russia's "full-scale unlawful invasion of Ukraine" and the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all its military forces from Ukraine.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said before the vote that in the event of a Russian veto, the U.S. and Albania who sponsored the resolution will take it to the 193-member General Assembly where there are no vetoes, "and show that the world is still on the side of sovereignty and protecting territorial integrity."
That is likely to happen next week.
Britain's U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, echoed Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' statement that Russia's actions violate the U.N. Charter and must be condemned.
"The area Russia is claiming to annex is more than 90,000 square kilometers," she said. "This is the largest forcible annexation of territory since the Second World War. There is no middle ground on this."
The council vote came hours after a lavish Kremlin ceremony where President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to annex the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, saying they were now part of Russia and would be defended by Moscow.
Russian troops 'encircled'
in key Ukraine town
Ukraine's army on Saturday said its forces had surrounded several thousand Russian troops near the key eastern town of Lyman which has been under Moscow's control since spring.
"The Russian grouping near Lyman is encircled," Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's eastern forces, said, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
He said that previously there were "around 5,000-5,500" Russian troops in the area, but military action could have "reduced" their numbers.
According to Cherevatyi, five villages near Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region had been liberated.
Also on Saturday, the governor of the neighbouring Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said on social media that nearly 5,000 Russian troops ended up in the "Lyman Cauldron".
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