‘When the Ukrainian troops leave the territories they occupy, then the hostilities will cease,’ declared Vladimir Putin during his state visit to Kyrgyzstan yesterday. ‘If they do not leave, we will achieve it militarily.’ The Russian President did not specify which territories he expects Ukraine to abandon. Did he mean only the Donetsk region? Did he also mean Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which Moscow has annexed in its constitution? Or did he, perhaps, mean the whole of Ukraine?
Putin’s speech didn’t suggest he was willing to compromise. He again repeated his claim that signing any documents with Ukraine was ‘pointless’ as President Zelensky has ‘lost his legitimacy’
It’s futile to look for truth in Putin’s public statements. But his replies to pre-approved questions make one thing clear: Russia’s demands haven’t softened since the start of the invasion in 2022. Nor has Putin’s desire to get rid of Volodymyr Zelensky, whose statesmanship during the war has so far derailed Moscow’s plan to seize Kyiv and install a puppet government to bring Ukraine back under the Russian umbrella. Putin has agreed to discuss the peace plan, drafted by US and Ukrainian negotiators in Switzerland on Sunday, when US envoy Steve Witkoff travels to Moscow next week. But there is little tangible evidence that he is ready to end the fighting. As Russia showed after the Alaska summit in August, it will happily enter another loop of negotiations to fuel Donald Trump’s delusion that peace is possible and that it is close.
Putin’s speech didn’t suggest he was willing to compromise. He again repeated his claim that signing any documents with Ukraine was ‘pointless’ as President Zelensky has ‘lost his legitimacy’. He argued that any deal with Zelensky’s government was ‘legally impossible’ because Ukraine did not hold elections when Zelensky’s five-year term expired last May due to the imposition of martial law. Reading between the lines, it’s clear that what Putin really wants is a peace deal to be struck between Washington and Moscow about Ukraine – without Ukraine.
Yesterday Putin also called for Russia’s conquests to be recognised – in his own words – by the ‘main global actors’. He then demanded, once a peace deal has been finalised and martial law lifted, that Ukraine holds presidential elections and a referendum to recognise the occupied territories as Russian. Why Putin thinks Ukrainians would ever vote for this is another question. He may expect Donald Trump’s administration to keep twisting Ukraine until it gives in to Russian terms.
A good chunk of Putin’s speech was also spent insisting he had no plans to attack Europe – a promise he said he is willing to put ‘in writing’. It’s difficult to imagine anyone taking this too seriously given that, a year before the full-scale invasion, he repeatedly denied plans to attack Ukraine while building up military capabilities along the border. Nevertheless, he threatened a series of ‘retaliatory measures’ if the West uses the cash value of frozen Russian assets to finance a £120 billion reparations loan to Ukraine. Whether he meant lawsuits, more ‘unidentified’ drones flying into Nato airspace or more threatening action, he didn’t say.
In the end, Putin expressed his satisfaction with the latest news from the frontline. He boasted about Russian military gains in the city of Pokrovsk, omitting the small detail that it has taken Moscow nearly two years to seize the city and cost him tens of thousands of soldiers in the process. Instead, Putin focused on issues in Ukraine’s military forces such as poor conscription numbers and rising desertions. Convinced that Ukraine’s defences will collapse, Putin warned that if Zelensky and Europeans want to fight until the last Ukrainian dies, Russia is ‘prepared for this’. Yet another sinister sign that, in Putin’s mind, this bloody war is far from over.
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