Putin demands more Ukraine land to end war

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.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters that Putin’s conditions were tantamount to proposing that Ukraine admit defeat and sign away its sovereignty.

There was “no possibility to find compromise” on the basis of what Putin had proposed, he said.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg slammed conditions set out by Putin for initiating Ukraine peace talks, calling them a proposal for “more aggression, more occupation,” reports AFP.

The timing of Putin’s speech was clearly intended to pre-empt the Swiss summit, billed as a “peace conference” despite Russia’s exclusion, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks a show of international support for Kyiv’s terms to end the war.

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