War in Ukraine: Putin’s tough conditions to end the conflict
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Russian President Vladimir Putin listed his conditions for ending the war in Ukraine this Friday.
Under these, the Kyiv government will have to Completely withdraw your troops from the Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia Since it launched its offensive in 2022.
The proposal was immediately described by Kiev “An insult to common sense”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow until Russian forces leave all territory of his country, including the Crimea peninsula, which Russia has controlled since 2014.
Putin also said that Ukraine would have to do this Renounce your intention to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) before the peace talks began.
Putin’s statement laying out his conditions for a ceasefire came as leaders 90 countries are preparing to meet in Switzerland Russia has not been invited to a summit this Saturday to discuss paths to peace in Ukraine.
What else did Putin say?
At a meeting of Russian ambassadors in Moscow on Friday, Putin said his conditions are “very simple” and require the Ukrainian military to partially withdraw from four regions occupied by its troops: Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia.
He also said Ukraine must abandon its efforts to join the NATO military alliance to counter Russian advances.
“As soon as Kiev declares that it is ready for such a decision… an order to ceasefire and start negotiations will be given from our side immediately, literally within the same minute,” Putin said.
In addition, he said that they must be Economic sanctions canceled The West has imposed this on Russia since the war began in February 2022.
In his speech he also stressed that Ukraine must go through a process “Demilitarization” and achieve a “neutral” position between the West and Russia. And reiterating his justification for invading Ukraine, he said the neighbouring country must be “demilitarised”.
More than two years later, Russia controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Reactions from Kyiv and NATO
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Putin’s proposal This is tantamount to Ukraine admitting defeat and giving up its sovereigntyTo which he admitted that it was an “absolute farce” and that it was “offensive to common sense.”
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said, “It is absurd that Putin, who together with his accomplices planned, prepared and carried out the largest armed aggression in Europe since World War II, presents himself as a peacemaker.”
Kiev has said peace can only be based on the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine and the restoration of its territorial integrity.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has rejected Putin’s proposal and said that such a proposal “This was not done with good intentions”,
“This is a proposal that really means that Russia will have to achieve its war aims while expecting the Ukrainians to give up far more territory than Russia has been able to capture so far,” he said.
Meeting in Switzerland
President Zelensky is scheduled to attend Summit with 90 countries This Saturday near Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where he hopes to demonstrate that he will continue to have international support.
The Swiss government has said the summit aims to “provide a forum in which world leaders discuss the path to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, based on international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”
The Kremlin said such a meeting would be “worthless” if Russia did not participate. China refused to participate due to the absence of Russian representation.
Attendees also include US Vice President, Kamala Harris; French President, Emmanuel Macron; German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz; Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen.
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The peace summit comes after G7 leaders agreed on an aid plan for Ukraine funded by frozen Russian assets.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the G7 countries and the EU seized Russian assets worth $325 billion. The asset fund generates interest of about $3 billion per year.
Those returns would be used to pay the annual interest on the debt, according to the G7 plan US$50 billion for Ukrainecontracted in international markets.
The money is not expected to arrive until the end of the year, but is seen as a long-term solution to support the war effort and Ukraine’s economy.
On the sidelines of the G7 summit, the United States and Ukraine also signed a ten-year bilateral security agreement, described as “Historic” by Kiev and it paves the way for entry into NATO.
This article was written and edited by our journalists with the help of an artificial intelligence translation tool as part of a pilot program.
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