War in Ukraine: Putin’s harsh conditions to end the conflict

The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, listed this Friday his conditions for ending the war in Ukraine.

Under these, the Kyiv government would have to completely withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian territories that Russia annexed since it launched its invasion in 2022.

The proposal was immediately described by Kyiv as “offense to common sense”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky maintains that Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow until Russian forces abandon all of his country’s territory, including the Crimean peninsula, which Russia has controlled since 2014.

Putin also stated that Ukraine would have to renounce its intention to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) before peace talks could begin.

Putin’s statement laying out his conditions for the ceasefire came as leaders of 90 countries prepare to meet in Switzerland this Saturday to discuss the paths to peace in Ukraine, at a summit to which Russia has not been invited.

At a meeting of Russian ambassadors in Moscow on Friday, Putin said his conditions are “very simple” and that they require the Ukrainian army to withdraw from four regions partially occupied by its troops: Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

He also noted that Ukraine would have to cease its efforts to join the NATO military alliance for the Russian advance to be stopped.

“As soon as Kyiv declares that it is ready for such a decision… an order for a ceasefire and start of negotiations will immediately follow from our side, literally in the same minute,” Putin said.

Furthermore, he stated that it is essential that they be economic sanctions canceled that the West has imposed on Russia since the war began in February 2022.

In his speech, he also insisted that Ukraine must go through a process of “demilitarization” and acquire a “neutral” status between the West and Russia. And repeating his justification for invading Ukraine, he noted that the neighboring country must “denazify.”

After more than two years, Russia controls almost a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said that Putin’s proposal is equivalent to Ukraine admitting defeat and giving up its sovereigntyfor which he considered that it is a “complete farce” and that it is “offensive to common sense.”

“It is absurd that Putin, who planned, prepared and carried out, together with his accomplices, the largest armed aggression in Europe since the Second World War, presents himself as a peacemaker,” said the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

Kyiv has said peace can only be based on the full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine and the restoration of its territorial integrity.

Rejecting Putin’s offer, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said such a proposal “it was not done in good faith”.

“This is a proposal that in reality means that Russia must achieve its war objectives, hoping that the Ukrainians will give up considerably more territory than Russia has been able to occupy until now,” he said.

President Zelensky is scheduled to attend the summit with 90 countries this Saturday near Lake Lucerne, in Switzerland, where he hopes to demonstrate that he continues to enjoy international support.

The Swiss government has stated that the aim of the summit is “to provide a forum in which world leaders discuss the paths towards a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, based on international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”

The Kremlin noted that such a meeting will be “useless” if Russia does not participate. China declined its participation due to the absence of Russian representation.

Among the confirmed attendees is the US Vice President, Kamala Harris; the French president, Emmanuel Macron; the chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz; the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

The peace summit comes after G7 leaders agreed on an aid scheme for Ukraine financed by frozen Russian assets.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, G7 countries and the EU froze Russian assets worth $325 billion. The asset fund generates about $3 billion a year in interest.

According to the G7 plan, those returns will be used to pay the annual interest on a loan of 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 Kyiv and that paves a path to 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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