Russia has renewed its hardline demands for ending the Ukraine war, ruling out a ceasefire or comprehensive negotiations with Ukraine unless it withdraws from the eastern Donbass region.
“In order 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 ceasefire and to leave the territory of the Donbas, to leave the Russian regions,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday during a conference call.
The comments come less than a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the more than four-year conflict was “heading to an end”, without elaborating.
Russia currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine: the entirety of the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk — collectively referred to as the Donbas — and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
It claims all five regions as its own, following hastily-organised referendums widely seen by the international community as illegitimate.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected Russia’s demands, saying ceding to them would be tantamount to surrender.
