Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced new conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, stating that Russia will only cease hostilities if Kiev surrenders all four regions claimed by Moscow and abandons its intention to join NATO.
The Ukrainian government immediately dismissed these terms as a “complete farce” and “offensive to common sense.”
Speaking on Friday ahead of a peace conference in Switzerland, to which Russia has not been invited, Putin laid out his conditions for a “definitive end” to the war in more detail than at any previous time since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
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In addition to withdrawing from the four occupied regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Putin demanded that Ukraine demilitarize and that Western countries lift their sanctions against Russia, which have damaged but not crippled its economy.
These conditions have prevented Russia from meeting its original war goals, when Moscow believed it could capture Kiev in days and the rest of Ukraine in weeks. Nearly two and a half years later, Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed a decade ago.
Putin’s Conditions
Ukrainian and some Western officials have repeatedly warned that Putin will not settle for anything less than the total defeat of Kiev and that any truce or peace negotiations are merely a tactic to allow Russian troops to regroup and launch a new and fiercer offensive in the future.
In comments to the foreign ministry, Putin said Russia’s conditions for peace negotiations are “simple,” starting with the full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the entire territory of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Moscow only partially controls these regions, but in 2022 it claimed that the entirety of each of them was part of Russian territory.
Putin stressed that Ukraine should hand over not only the territory on the Russian side of the front line, which runs through each of these regions, but “the entire territory of these regions.”
“As soon as they declare in Kiev that they are ready for such a decision and begin the actual withdrawal of troops from these regions and also officially notify about the abandonment of plans to join NATO, our side immediately, at that very minute, will give the order to cease fire and begin negotiations.”
Putin vowed to “ensure the unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations” and said Moscow recognizes its role in global stability. He called for his terms to end the war to be cemented into international agreements.
Ukraine’s Response to Putin
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country “does not trust” Putin’s “ultimatum,” which he argued does not differ significantly from previous offers. Speaking Friday from the Group of Seven summit in Italy, Zelenskyy drew parallels between Putin’s tactics and those used by the Nazis to conquer parts of Europe before World War II.
“He talks about regions of our country, and he says he won’t stop. It is the same as Hitler did when he said ‘give me a part of Czechoslovakia and that will be the end.’ You can’t trust that. That is why we should not trust these messages, because Putin is following the same course,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland and the failed policy of appeasement by Western countries.
