Vladimir Putin sets conditions for ceasefire in Ukraine

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Vladimir Putin said Russia would immediately cease fire and begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine in exchange for control of four front-line Ukrainian regions, a proposal immediately rejected by Kiev.

The Russian president’s conditions include areas that Moscow never occupied during its two-year invasion or from which it subsequently withdrew, as well as a promise that Ukraine would never join NATO. Putin also seeks the lifting of Western sanctions imposed in 2022 in response to his large-scale invasion.

Ukraine said put onThe UN proposal amounted to capitulation and would leave the country vulnerable to future attacks.

“New territorial realities must be recognized,” Putin said in a speech to foreign policy officials on Friday. “All these basic main conditions must be established through fundamental international agreements. Naturally, this involves the lifting of all Western sanctions against Russia.”

Under Putin’s terms, Russia would gain full control of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. Putin claimed to have annexed the regions, despite having only partially occupied them in autumn 2022.

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Fighting has intensified across the four regions in recent months, with Russian forces slowly seizing the initiative on the battlefield following Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive last year and a six-month delay in U.S. military assistance that allowed Moscow make more gains.

Putin demanded that Ukraine commit to no longer seeking to join NATO, an objective enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution and confirmed by the US-led military alliance, although without a concrete timetable.

The Russian president also called on Kiev to never develop nuclear weapons and to pursue its “demilitarization” and “denazification,” two vague goals that Russia set at the start of the invasion.

Putin’s demands represent the most specific conditions he has set for a possible end to the war since ordering the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He has made clear he would establish a maximalist position in any peace talks and continue to fight indefinitely if they have not been met.

“Today we are making another real and specific peace offering. If Kiev and Western capitals refuse as they did before, then that is their problem at the end of the day – their political and moral responsibility for the continued bloodshed,” Putin said.

“Obviously, the facts on the ground at the front will continue to change, not in favor of the Kiev regime, and the conditions for starting negotiations will be different.”

Putin’s demands suggested the Kremlin was confident in the invasion’s progress, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “This sets the threshold for what the Russians want,” he said, adding that while Moscow could probably make some concessions, “the main requirement here is the absence of military cooperation between Ukraine and the West.”

Moscow withdrew from some of the areas in southeastern Ukraine that it said it annexed after an unrecognized referendum in 2022, including Kherson, the only provincial capital it captured during the initial phase of its full-scale invasion.

Russia never controlled the city of Zaporizhzhia, which had a pre-war population of over 700,000 and has since become home to many refugees from Russian-controlled areas.

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Oleksandr Lytvynenko, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, told the Financial Times that Putin’s comments were a “demonstration that he does not want to negotiate” and that the Russian leader’s terms were unacceptable to Kiev.

Lytvynenko said Putin is speaking out now because he is “afraid” that a Kiev-led peace summit, which begins in Switzerland on Saturday, will be successful.

Leaders and representatives from more than 90 countries will gather in the Swiss resort of Bürgenstock, where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will appeal to nations that have been indifferent to his nation’s plight.

“Our position is very clear: the peace formula,” Lytvynenko said, referring to Zelenskyy’s 10-point plan to end the war, which includes the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

Russia was not invited to the peace summit, but Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, told the FT that Kiev could invite a Moscow representative to a second peace summit sometime in the future.

Gabuev said Putin’s comments would likely help his partners strengthen their position in future talks — especially China, which has a competing peace plan aligned with the Kremlin. Chinese authorities refused to participate in the summit in Switzerland because Putin was not invited.

The Russian president’s allies would likely describe the Swiss summit as “ill-prepared talks based on unrealistic expectations,” leading them to offer their own “framework to unite the parties,” Gabuev said.

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