On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would “immediately” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and start talks if Kyiv started pulling its troops out of the four regions Moscow annexed in 2022 and gave up its plans to join NATO.
Kyiv doesn’t seem interested in such a deal because it wants to join the military alliance and has asked Russia to pull its troops out of all of its territory. Ukraine didn’t say anything right away about Putin’s idea.
Putin said in a speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, “We will do it right away.”
The leaders of the Group of Seven most industrialised nations met in Italy at the same time that he spoke. This weekend, Switzerland was getting ready to host many world leaders (but none from Moscow) to try to plan the first steps towards peace in Ukraine.
Putin said that his plan is not to “freeze” the conflict in Ukraine but to “finally resolve” it. He also said that the Kremlin is “ready to start negotiations without delay.”
In a broader call for peace, the Russian leader said that Ukraine should not have any nuclear weapons, its military should be limited, and the interests of the Russian-speaking people in the country should be protected.
Putin said that all of these things should be written into “fundamental international agreements” and that all Western sanctions against Russia should be lift.
He said, “We urge you to turn this sad page in history and start restoring the unity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe in general step by step.”
Putin’s speech was one of the few times he clearly laid out his demands for ending the war in Ukraine, but they didn’t include any new ones. The Kremlin has said in the past that Kyiv should accept the land it has gained and give up its plans to join NATO.
Russia illegally took over four areas in 2022, but it doesn’t fully control any of them. On Friday, Putin insisted that Kyiv should leave all four areas and give them over to Moscow within their administrative borders. In the southeast region of Zaporizhzhia, Russia still doesn’t control the administrative capital with 700,000 people that shares its name. In the nearby region of Kherson, Moscow pulled out of the largest city and capital of that region, also named Kherson, in November 2022.
