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President Vladimir Putin said yesterday Russia would end the war in Ukraine only if Kyiv agreed to drop its Nato ambitions and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow, demands Kyiv swiftly rejected as tantamount to surrender.
On the eve of a conference in Switzerland to which Russia has not been invited, Putin set out maximalist conditions wholly at odds with the terms demanded by Ukraine, apparently reflecting Moscow’s growing confidence that its forces have the upper hand in the war.
He restated his demand for Ukraine’s demilitarisation, unchanged from the day he sent in his troops on February 24, 2022, and said an end to Western sanctions must also be part of a peace deal.
He also repeated his call for Ukraine’s “denazification”, based on what Kyiv calls an unfounded slur against its leadership.
Ukraine said the conditions were “absurd”.
“He is offering for Ukraine to admit defeat. He is offering for Ukraine to legally give up its territories to Russia. He is offering for Ukraine to sign away its geopolitical sovereignty,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Italy’s SkyTG24 news channel: “These are ultimatum messages that are no different from messages from the past.”
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said at Nato headquarters in Brussels: “He (Putin) is not in any position to dictate to Ukraine what they must do to bring about peace.”
The timing of Putin’s speech was clearly intended to preempt the Swiss summit, billed as a “peace conference” despite Russia’s exclusion, where Zelenskiy seeks a show of international support for Kyiv’s terms to end the war.
Russia controls nearly a fifth of Ukrainian territory in the third year of the war. Ukraine says peace can only be based on the full withdrawal of Russian forces.
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