Russian president’s new ultimatum comes as foreign envoys meet in Switzerland to discuss western-led peace plan
Vladimir Putin has demanded that Kyiv cede more land, withdraw troops deeper inside its own country, and drop its Nato bid in order for him to end Russia’s war in Ukraine., convene in Switzerland this weekend to discuss a western-led peace plan. Russia is not invited to the conference and the president’s remarks on Friday were likely to have been timed as a spoiler to that summit.
The new terms appear to be a nonstarter, as Putin staked out a maximalist position that included claims on land that Russia has “annexed” without holding under its military control. Putin demanded that Ukrainian troops leave the entire regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and that they be declared Russian territory by international agreement, calling the issue “closed” for Russia.
“Despite all the trickery, this theft will certainly remain a theft,” he told diplomats during the speech. “And it will not go unpunished.” Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who resigned in 2022 in protest at the war, said Putin had “thrown a bone to a bunch of useful idiots” by giving lip-service to a peace process without fundamentally altering Russia’s negotiating position on the conflict.
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