President Vladimir Putin has said either Ukrainian troops will withdraw from the country’s eastern Donbas region or Russia will seize it – rejecting any compromise over a major obstacle to ending the Ukraine war.
“Either we take back these territories by force, or eventually Ukrainian troops withdraw,” Putin told India Today.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out ceding territory, whether held by Russia or not.
Putin’s comments come after President Donald Trump said his negotiators believed Russia’s leader “would like to end the war” after talks in Moscow on Tuesday.
Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who led the US side of the talks, is due to meet Ukraine’s negotiators in Florida.
Trump said the talks were “reasonably good”, adding it was too soon to say what would happen as “it does take two to tango.”
Russian forces now control some 85% of the Donbas. The original iteration of the US peace plan proposed to hand over areas of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Putin.
In his India Today interview ahead of a state visit to Delhi, Putin also said that Moscow disagrees with parts of the US plan.
“At times we said that yes, we can discuss this, but to that we can’t agree,” Putin said.
He did not name the sticking points. At least two significant points of contention remain – the fate of Ukrainian territory seized by Russian forces and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Putin said Moscow had not seen a modified version of the US peace plan before his nearly five-hour talks with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
“That’s why we had to go over every point, that’s why it took so long,” Putin said.
Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser and key negotiator Yuri Ushakov earlier said the Kremlin talks produced “no compromise” on ending the war.
Ushakov also implied that the Russian negotiating position had been strengthened thanks to what Moscow said were its recent successes on the battlefield.
But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybhia accused Putin of “wasting the world’s time”, while Ukraine’s ambassador to the US said they do not “need to wait for promises from Russia”.
Zelensky has insisted on firm security guarantees for Ukraine in any deal.
On Wednesday, he said “the world clearly feels that there is a real opportunity to end the war”, but negotiations must be “backed by pressure on Russia”, which Kyiv and its European allies accuse of deliberately stalling any ceasefire agreements.
Zelensky earlier said his top negotiators had managed to make some key changes in the original US peace plan – seen as strongly favouring Moscow – during last week’s talks with an American delegation in Geneva.
In a joint statement, US and Ukrainian negotiators said they had drawn up an “updated and refined peace framework” – but provided no further details.
Top negotiators from Europe – who had voiced concern over the original US plan – were also in the Swiss city, meeting separately with the Ukrainian and the US teams.
In a separate development on Thursday, Germany’s Der Spiegel news website said it had obtained a confidential transcript of a conference call in which European leaders expressed concern over the US negotiations.
“There is a possibility that the US will betray Ukraine on the issue of territory without clarity on security guarantees,” French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly said, according to an English transcript of Monday’s conference call.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was quoted as warning that Zelensky had to be “extremely careful in the coming days”.
“They are playing games, both with you and with us,” Merz reportedly said.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb was also quoted as saying: “We mustn’t leave Ukraine and Volodymyr alone with these guys.”
The BBC has not seen the reported transcript.
In response to a Der Spiegel inquiry, France’s Élysée Palace stated that “the president did not express himself in those terms”. The presidential office declined to provide details on how Macron expressed himself, citing confidentiality.
Stubb declined to comment to Der Spiegel, and Merz has not commented on the issue.
The BBC has contacted the White House for comment.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.
In recent weeks, Russian troops have been slowly advancing in south-east Ukraine, despite reported heavy combat casualties.
