Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Moscow would only halt its offensive on Ukraine if Kyiv effectively surrenders by pulling its troops out of the east and south and dropping its bid for NATO membership.
Ukraine, NATO and the United States immediately rejected Putin’s hardline conditions to halt the full-scale military offensive that he launched in February 2022.
The two countries have been locked in bloody conflict for more than two years, and no direct peace talks have been held since the first weeks of Russia’s campaign, when it was advancing on the Ukrainian capital.
Ukraine has called for Russia’s full withdrawal from its internationally recognized territory, including the annexed Crimean peninsula, as part of any peace deal.
Kyiv hopes to marshal international support at a major peace summit in Switzerland this weekend.
But with Russia advancing on the battlefield and Ukraine struggling with manpower and ammunition shortages, Putin’s comments show little appetite to compromise.
“Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions,” Putin said in a televised address to Russian diplomats in Moscow.
Russia claimed to have annexed the four regions in 2022, despite not having full control over any of them.
The regional capitals of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are still in Ukrainian hands.
“As soon as Kyiv says it is ready to do this and begins really withdrawing troops and officially renounces plans to join NATO, we will immediately, literally that very minute, cease fire and begin talks,” Putin said.
Russia was seeking “Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear status, its demilitarization and denazification,” he added.
‘Offensive’
Kyiv and its Western backers immediately slammed the demands.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said they were “absurd” and that Putin wanted “the occupation of Ukraine, the destruction of the Ukrainian people.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, called them “a complete sham” and “offensive to common sense.”
At the end of a NATO meeting in Brussels, US Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said, “Putin has occupied, illegally occupied, sovereign Ukrainian territory. He is not in any position to dictate to Ukraine what they must do to bring about peace.”
Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s chief, said Putin was not acting in “good faith.”
Ukraine has said it will only agree to peace if Russia fully withdraws.
It sees any halt in fighting on Moscow’s terms as a chance for Russia to regroup for another attack, with the goal of capturing the entire country.
Putin on Friday said Moscow could let Ukraine keep “sovereignty” of the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, “on the condition that Russia has a strong land link with Crimea.”
Military analysts have long said Russia wanted to control a “land bridge” between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, along the southern coast of Ukraine.
With AFP
