Putin Demands Ukraine Withdrawal for Full Donbas Control; Kyiv Refuses

Key Takeaways

• Putin demands Ukrainian troop withdrawal from Donbas.
• Kyiv refuses to cede any part of its territory.
• Russia currently controls approximately 19.2% of Ukrainian land.
• Moscow seeks full control of Donbas and informal US recognition of said control.
• Talks between Russian and US officials regarding a potential settlement.
• Finland accuses US of seeking economic gains from peace in Ukraine.

In an interview aired on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would seek to fully control Ukraine's Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian troops withdrew, a demand Kyiv has flatly rejected.

Speaking to India Today ahead of a visit to New Delhi, Putin said that Russia had two options: “Either we liberate these territories by force, or the Ukrainian troops withdraw from these territories.”

Ukraine maintains that it will not cede any territory that Moscow has failed to win on the battlefield. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stressed that Moscow should not be rewarded for the conflict it started.

Russia currently controls 19.2% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, over 80% of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, roughly 75% of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as small portions of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

In discussions with the United States regarding the outlines of a possible peace deal to end the conflict, Russia has repeatedly expressed its desire to control the entire Donbas region, and has requested informal US recognition of that control.

In 2022, Russia announced that Ukraine's Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions had become part of Russia after referendums that the West and Kyiv have derided as a "sham". However, most countries recognize these regions, as well as Crimea, as part of Ukraine.

Putin met with US envoy Vitkov and Trump's son-in-law Kushner on Tuesday at the Kremlin, and indicated that Russia had accepted some US proposals regarding Ukraine, and that negotiations should continue.

Russian news agency RIA quoted Putin as saying that his meeting with Vitkov and Kushner "was very useful", and was based on proposals he discussed with Trump in Alaska in August.

However, Finnish President Stubb stated in an interview aired in Finnish media on Sunday, that he believes the United States is seeking “economic gains” in the process of pushing Russia and Ukraine towards a “peace agreement”.

Stubb added that the US pursuit of economic gains is a “reality”. According to him, the US is “also investing in the development of Ukrainian minerals and others”, and that the solution to the Ukrainian crisis may be somewhat linked to trade issues.