Russian President Vladimir Putin de facto set Ukraine’s surrender on Friday as a condition for talks, on the eve of a summit in Switzerland devoted to ways to achieve peace and from which Russia is excluded.
The master of the Kremlin, whose army has for months regained the initiative on the battlefield against Ukrainian forces lacking men and ammunition, demanded that kyiv abandon its ambition to join NATO and withdraw its forces from the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
“As soon as kyiv […] begins the effective withdrawal of troops and it notifies the abandonment of its plan to join NATO, we will immediately, this very minute, give the order to cease fire and begin negotiations,” said Mr. Putin to the executives of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
And he once again insisted that he wanted a “neutral, non-aligned, without nuclear weapons, demilitarized and denazified” Ukraine.
These demands constitute a de facto demand for capitulation by Ukraine, the objective of which is to restore its territorial integrity and maintain its sovereignty.
If Moscow has the initiative on the front, the Russian army, which has suffered considerable losses for two years, is unable to break through the Ukrainian lines and gain a decisive advantage over Ukraine.
The Kremlin proclaimed the annexation of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine in September 2022, in addition to Crimea in 2014.
Putin denounces “theft”
Vladimir Putin insisted on Friday that Ukraine must hand over all of these territories to Russia, even though Moscow only partially occupies them and fighting is still raging there.
The Russian president also denigrated the peace summit, from which Russia was excluded, planned in Switzerland for June 15 and 16 at the initiative of Ukraine. kyiv hopes that the approximately 90 delegations present will reach a consensus to increase pressure on Russia and its isolation.
Mr. Putin dismissed a “stratagem to divert everyone’s attention” from the real people responsible for the conflict, namely, in his reading, Ukraine and the West.
Mykhaïlo Podoliak, advisor to the Ukrainian presidency, insisted that Russian demands “clash with common sense” and constitute “an offense against international law”.
Vladimir Putin also denounced Thursday’s decision by the G7 to guarantee a $50 billion loan to Ukraine with future interest on Russian assets frozen since the start of the Russian offensive.
“Western countries have frozen part of Russian assets and foreign currency reserves. And now they are thinking about a legal basis to definitively appropriate them,” he declared, “even if we embellish things, theft is still theft and it will not go unpunished.”
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, considered it “right that Russia should pay”, but demanded from the G7 the pure and simple confiscation of the 300 billion euros of assets of the Russian central bank frozen by the West. for two years, which they refuse for legal reasons.
Surprise confession
Finally, the Russian president made a surprise revelation on the objectives of the first days of his assault, he who had always affirmed that his offensive was not aimed at the conquest of Ukrainian territories.
On Friday, he said one goal was to conquer Mariupol, a port city that suffered a gruesome siege in 2022, and another was to force Ukraine to grant him a land bridge across southern Ukraine to linking Russia to annexed Crimea.
Mr. Putin thus said that he had “not ruled out” giving kyiv sovereignty over the south of the country, “provided, however, that Russia has a solid land link with Crimea”.
He said that this claim had been served on March 5, 2022 to a distinguished guest who offered his mediator services. The Russian president did not reveal the name of this official, but that day, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was in the Kremlin.