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Russian President Vladimir Putin
“If Ukrainian troops leave the occupied territories, we will cease hostilities. If they do not leave, we will expel them by military force.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said this Thursday that Moscow will cease hostilities with Ukraine if Kiev withdraws its forces from territories that Russia claims to have annexed.
“If Ukrainian troops leave the occupied territories, we will cease hostilities. If they do not leave, we will expel them by military force”, he declared at a press conference in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, where he is carrying out a state visit.
Russia claims the annexation of four territories (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia) that it does not currently control 100%, but Putin did not specify this Thursday which of these regions he was referring to.
The North-American controversialist assumed that Crimea, Lugansk and Donetsk would be recognized as “de facto Russian” and that the borders would be frozen at the administrative limit of the province of Donbass. The Europeans hope that the freeze will take place on the current front line, allowing Ukraine to keep around 12% of Donbass. In exchange, Kiev would undertake not to recover, by military means, the sovereign territory currently occupied.
Putin stressed that the general lines of the initial peace plan discussed by the United States and Ukraine could become the basis of future agreements to end the war, but that otherwise Russia would continue to fight.
Regarding a possible attack on Europe, Putin classified it as “crazy people and swindlers” those who think this could happen. “There are people there who, it seems, are a little crazy or some kind of crooks who want to take advantage” of the idea that Russia is “preparing to attack Europe.”
“Russia has no plan to attack Europe – that’s a ridiculous idea,” added Vladimir Putin, who also took the opportunity to deny the idea by the Bloomberg agency that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, is at his service.
Witkoff is going to Moscow at “President Trump’s command” to negotiate the peace agreement, the Kremlin leader emphasizes.
Just this Thursday, the Russian president considered the Ukrainian leadership illegitimate and said it was unwise to sign any documents with this. From Putin’s perspective, Kiev’s leadership lost legitimacy after refusing to hold elections when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s term expired. Kiev has in turn reinforced on several occasions that it cannot hold elections while it is under martial law and defending its territory from Russian aggression.
