Washington, Aug 22: During talks in Alaska last week with former US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out three key conditions for a ceasefire with Ukraine.
According to senior US officials, Putin’s demands include Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Donbas region, halting efforts to join NATO, and a ban on the deployment of Western troops in Ukrainian territory.
Trump said he has discussed these points with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stressing that the decision on whether to end the three-year war now rests with him. Trump also clarified in his meetings with Zelensky and European leaders that he preferred a direct peace agreement rather than a temporary ceasefire.
Putin repeated his June 2024 demand that Ukraine must fully pull back from parts of Donbas still under its control. In exchange, Moscow would stop its advances in the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson fronts and return those territories to Ukraine. Russia currently controls about 88 percent of Donbas and around 73 percent of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to estimates. It has also offered to hand back smaller portions of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Beyond territorial concessions, Putin wants Ukraine to abandon its NATO aspirations and insists that the US and its allies give guarantees against further troop deployments in Eastern Europe. He also demanded that no Western peacekeeping forces be stationed in Ukraine.
Kyiv has not officially responded to Putin’s latest terms, but Zelensky has already rejected similar proposals. He has repeatedly said Ukraine cannot withdraw from Donbas, calling it a key defensive line against Russian advances. “If we retreat from the east, we will not survive as a country. Donbas is an industrial fortress that protects our existence,” Zelensky stated earlier.
On NATO, he stressed, “Membership is enshrined in our Constitution as a strategic goal and remains our strongest security guarantee. Deciding on NATO is not Russia’s prerogative.” People’s News Monitoring Service
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