Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Kiev hand over to Russia four Ukrainian regions annexed in September 2022, in addition to Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, and that Ukraine abandon plans to join NATO. These are unacceptable conditions for Ukrainian leaders and their Western allies.
Ukraine is demanding the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from its territory. Russia has occupied about 20 percent of Ukraine.
“For peace to be lasting, the new territorial realities that have emerged must be recognized and formalized in accordance with international law,” Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published on the official website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
His Ukrainian counterpart, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany Andriy Sibiga, was quick to react to these statements: “A new series of old ultimatums. Russia has not changed its brutal goals and does not show the slightest readiness for serious negotiations,” he wrote on social media.
He added that this proves that “the appetite of the aggressor only increases when it is not exposed to pressure and force.”
Time for new sanctions
“It is time to strike at the Russian war machine and impose new tough sanctions,” Sibiga stressed.
Russia is still demanding that Ukraine hand over the eastern Donbas region (including the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk), which is not fully under its control, but is ready to freeze the conflict in the south of the country along the current front line, the Republic of Turkey, which has hosted three rounds of talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul this year, said last week.
The Russian military has occupied about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, and Moscow is seeking the annexation of five regions: the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which form Donbas, and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, as well as Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
At talks in Istanbul earlier this year, Russian negotiators set Ukraine’s complete relinquishment of those territories as a condition for ending the conflict.
According to information from Ankara, Russia has nevertheless softened its stance after the recent summit in Alaska between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
