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Russia on Wednesday renewed its demands for ending the war in Ukraine, saying there would be no ceasefire or comprehensive negotiations unless Kyiv withdrew its forces from the eastern Donbas region.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy must order Ukrainian troops to stop fighting and leave what Moscow calls Russian regions before a ceasefire or full-scale peace talks could begin.
“For there to be a ceasefire and a window for full-scale peace talks to open...President Zelenskyy must give the order for Ukraine's army to cease fire and leave the territory of the Donbas, to leave the Russian regions,” Peskov told reporters, including AFP, during a conference call.
The comments came less than a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the more than four-year-old conflict was “heading to an end,” without providing details.
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Russia currently occupies around one-fifth of Ukraine, including the entirety of the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.
Moscow also controls most of the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas, as well as large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Russia claims all five regions as its own following the hastily organized referendums that are widely seen by the international community as illegitimate.
Zelenskyy has rejected Russia’s demands, saying that accepting them would be tantamount to surrender.
The Ukraine conflict escalated after Russia’s full-scale offensive in 2022. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people and is considered Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
U.S.-led talks aimed at ending the fighting have shown little progress since February, when Washington shifted its focus to its war with Iran.
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