MOSCOW/ROME (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin set conditions for a ceasefire with Ukraine on Friday, including the formal annexation of four regions in the east and south, demands immediately dismissed as “absurd” by the Kyiv authorities.
During a speech Friday morning in Moscow, on the eve of the international peace conference in Switzerland, the Russian president tried to preempt the outcome of this meeting, to which Russia is not invited, by posing “very simple conditions” for the cessation of hostilities.
Ukraine’s abandonment of its plan to join NATO and the transfer of four regions partially occupied by the Russian army: the oblasts of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, de facto annexed in September 2022 by Moscow following referendums.
Other demands from Vladimir Putin: the demilitarization of Ukraine, invaded on February 24, 2022 by the Russian army, and the end of Western sanctions.
“These are ultimatums which are no different from the messages of the past,” reacted the Ukrainian president on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy, on the SkyTG24 television channel.
“He will not stop,” Volodimir Zelensky continued of the Kremlin leader, drawing a parallel with the expansionist aims of Adolf Hitler before the outbreak of World War II.
Mykhaïlo Podoliak, advisor to the Ukrainian president, considered these statements, which de facto concern a demand for Ukraine’s surrender, to be unfounded.
“He is ‘offering’ to Ukraine to give up its geopolitical sovereignty,” he told Reuters.
The Russian army currently controls approximately 1/5th of Ukrainian territory.
Switzerland is hosting 90 states and organizations on Saturday and Sunday for a peace conference that is expected to focus on nuclear safety and Ukraine’s food supply and leave aside territorial issues. Russia deemed this initiative “futile”.
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, French version Leo Marchandon, editing by Sophie Louet)
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