Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that Russia will “take the entire Donbas region of Ukraine by force, if the Ukrainian army does not withdraw.”
“Either we will take these territories by force, or the Ukrainian army will leave,” Putin said in an interview with the Indian television channel India Today.
Ukraine has said that it “will not give Russia any part of its territory,” and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky added that “Moscow should not be rewarded for the war it started.”
Russia currently controls over 19 percent of Ukraine’s territory, and in negotiations with the United States to end the war, Moscow has emphasized that it wants control of all of Donbas, a part of Ukraine consisting of two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk.
In 2022, the Kremlin announced that the territories of Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye now belong to Russia, but most countries still consider the aforementioned regions to be part of Ukraine.
Putin also spoke on Tuesday with US President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and said that Russia had “accepted some US proposals” but that negotiations were continuing.
