The Russian president, Vladimir Putinassured this Friday that will order an immediate ceasefire as soon as Ukraine withdraws its troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in the east and south of the country, and abandons its plans to join NATO.
“As soon as kyiv announces that it is ready for this decision and starts a actual withdrawal of troops of those regions and also officially communicate their rannounces plans to join NATO, The order to cease fire and begin negotiations will be immediately issued from us,” the president said when addressing the senior staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an intervention broadcast live on television.
Putin stressed that “Ukrainian troops must completely withdraw from the entire territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, and from the Kherson and Zaporoyia regions. Then negotiations will be possible“.
He specified that it refers to the administrative territory of these four regions when Ukraine achieved independence from the USSR in 1991, since today the Russian Army does not control them in their entirety.
The Russian leader also assured that Russia is committed to guaranteeing the “safe and unhindered” withdrawal of Ukrainian military units.
He stressed that Russia demands a “neutral, non-bloc and non-nuclear” Ukraine, to which must be added the demilitarization and denazification of the country, two of the objectives set when it ordered the start of the military campaign in February 2022.
“Without a doubt, the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine must be fully guaranteed; the new territorial reality must be recognized; the status of Crimea and Sevastopol, and the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Kherson regions and Zaporizhzhia as entities of the Russian Federation,” he added.
Putin stressed that all these commitments must be coined as international agreements, which would also include “the cancellation of all sanctions against Russia.”
“I believe that Russia is proposing a variant that will make it possible to truly end the war in Ukraine. That is, “we call to turn a tragic page in history”said.
At the same time, Putin warned that “if kyiv and Western capitals give up on this, as in the past, they will ultimately be politically and morally responsible for the continued bloodshed.”
“Evidently, the situation on the ground, on the battle front, will change and not in favor of the Kiev regime and the conditions for the start of negotiations will be different,” he stressed.
Putin, who again denounced that the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelensky is an “illegitimate” president who is usurping power after his mandate expired on May 20, set these conditions on the eve of the Swiss peace summit.
“We can already anticipate that (in Switzerland) everything will be reduced to vague conversations of a demagogic nature and a new round of accusations against Russia,” he asserted.
