WASHINGTON, Augt 18, 2024 (BSS/TASS) - The United States should immediately sit at the negotiating table with Russia, Ukraine and other stakeholders, said Jill Stein, who was approved as the Green Party's US presidential candidate earlier in the day.

"We need to decompress this conflict as quickly as possible, and we need to get back to negotiations with Russia, Ukraine and other players. What Russia essentially wanted was neutrality from Ukraine. That is absolutely simple," she said at a new conference following her nomination.

"We need to engage in basic diplomacy. This is not rocket science. This is basic diplomacy. It's basic conversation that could readily avert a catastrophic conflict here," she added.

In her opinion the conflict "would readily have been averted had the US sat down to negotiate in advance" or "had the US not sabotaged the peace agreement that was established shortly after" Russia began its special military operation in Ukraine.

She also believes that the incumbent administration's policy is, in essence, "the exercise of the military industrial military industrial complex and its intention to basically gin up business for itself by creating war, after war, after war. "And the American people need to put an end to it," she said.

Stein, a 74-year-old physician and an environmental activist, was officially nominated as the Green Party's presidential candidate for the upcoming election during a party convention on Saturday. Her running mate is Professor Butch Ware.

The US presidential election will be held on November 5. The Democratic Party was supposed to be represented by incumbent President Joe Biden, but after his failed performance in his June debate with Republican candidate Donald Trump, calls for the incumbent head of state to pull out grew louder among Democrats. On July 21, he decided to withdraw from the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the country's top office.