Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a warning on Wednesday that if Kyiv and its Western allies reject the Kremlin’s demands in peace negotiations, Moscow will seek to extend its gains in Ukraine.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, US President Donald Trump has launched a massive diplomatic campaign to put a stop to nearly four years of fighting. However, Washington’s efforts have encountered drastically conflicting demands from Moscow and Kyiv.
Putin said that while Moscow would prefer to accomplish its demands and “eliminate the root causes of the conflict” through diplomatic means, “if the opposing side and its foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive dialogue, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means.” He made this statement during an annual meeting with senior military officers.
The Russian leader was alluding to the nation’s annexation of Ukrainian territory, which was widely denounced in the West as an unjustified act of aggression and a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Putin threatened to extend a “buffer security zone” along the Russian border and asserted that “the Russian army has seized and is firmly holding strategic initiative all along the front line.”
“Our troops are different now; they are battle-hardened, and there is no other such army in the world.”
Putin highlighted the modernisation of Russia’s atomic arsenal, notably the new nuclear-capable intermediate-range Oreshnik ballistic missile, which he said will formally join combat duty this month, and lauded the country’s expanding military power. In November 2024, Russia tested a conventionally armed variant of the Oreshnik to attack a Ukrainian factory. Putin has boasted that it is impossible to intercept.
The Russian president simultaneously dismissed claims made by European leaders regarding Moscow’s alleged plans to attack European countries. as “lies and sheer nonsense … driven by short-sighted personal or group political interests, not by the interests of their people.”
Starkly different demands of Moscow and Kyiv
Putin’s strong words follow multiple rounds of negotiations this week between Ukrainian, European and American officials on a peace plan proposed by the United States.
Following a meeting with US envoys in Berlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the document may be completed in a few days and then presented to the Kremlin by US envoys.
Putin wants Crimea, which was unlawfully annexed in 2014, and every area in four major regions that his forces have taken control of to be acknowledged as Russian territory. Additionally, he has insisted that Ukraine leave those parts of eastern Ukraine that Moscow’s soldiers have not yet taken.
“Additionally, the Kremlin demands that Ukraine withdraw its bid to join NATO and threatens to consider NATO nations a “legitimate target” if any troops are deployed.
Zelenskyy stated that if the US and other Western countries provide Kyiv with security guarantees comparable to those provided to NATO members, he would be willing to withdraw Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. However, Ukraine continued to view NATO membership as the strongest security assurance to stop additional Russian aggression.
Putin envoy to discuss US peace plan with Trump advisors in Miami
According to a White House official and a source with knowledge of the matter, Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev is scheduled to travel to Miami this weekend to discuss the US peace plan to end the Ukraine war with White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Why it’s important: It is anticipated that Trump’s advisors would update Putin’s envoy on the status of negotiations between US and Ukrainian officials and attempt to persuade Russian government to accept the revised proposal to end the conflict.
Later this week, a Ukrainian delegation led by Rustem Umerov, national security adviser to Zelensky, is expected to go to Miami to meet with Witkoff and Kushner.
Sources said that there are currently no plans for a trilateral meeting involving Russian, Ukrainian, and American officials.