Ukraine has not changed its stance on the terms needed for a peace deal in Ukraine since the president said in 2024 that Ukrainian forces would have to withdraw from the four regions Moscow considers its own and publicly abandon plans to join Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman said at a press briefing earlier today.
No change in Russia’s goals, they will be achieved in the field
Putin had said in a televised interview over the weekend that Russia would continue to pursue its battlefield goals of full control of the four regions, rejecting what he described as Ukraine’s new proposal to limit hostilities in the more than four-year-old war.
Putin said in the same interview that Ukraine had proposed a mutual halt to long-range attacks and a reduction in conflict in the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia — that Russia has annexed, which Kiev rejects as an illegal land grab.
“Our position is known. Actually, it hasn’t changed. It was formulated two years ago by the head of state in a speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is known to the Kiev regime, it is known to American negotiators, and it remains absolutely consistent,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov also added that Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko discussed the war in Ukraine in a meeting over the weekend, before Lukashenko flew to China for talks.
Painful admission of fuel shortages from Putin
In the meantime, of particular significance is the fact that Putin admitted that his country faces “some shortage” of fuel, in an interview published by the Kremlin on Sunday, after repeated Ukrainian strikes in the four-year war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin:
If Ukraine is really capturing and liberating more and more territory—if it is truly winning—then Western leaders should simply wait.
If all of that is true, Russia’s strategic defeat would supposedly happen on its own
— Tabz (@TabzLIVE)
“As for strikes against critical infrastructure in general and energy infrastructure in particular, of course these attacks create problems, that’s obvious,” Putin said. As he added: “At the moment we are observing a certain shortage, but it is not critical.”
According to the same priority is strengthening Russia’s anti-aircraft defense and ensuring fuel supply, especially in Crimea.
Authorities in Russian-annexed Crimea declared a “state of emergency” on Friday due to fuel shortages and power outages caused by Ukrainian strikes on supply networks and oil facilities. Kiev calls the attacks just retribution for near-daily Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure since the February 2022 invasion.
Moscow opens Finland and nuclear chapter
In the meantime, the announcement – a response by the Russian Foreign Ministry regarding a law in Finland that potentially allows the country to develop nuclear weapons on Finnish soil in the event of war – also caused a sensation. According to the relevant announcement by Maria Zakharova, Russia considers this move to be a “real threat” to the country’s national security and for this reason the government will take political and military-technical measures in response.
