Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged to continue capturing Ukrainian territory. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (“DPR” and “LPR”) “will be liberated in any case,” Putin said. “That’s what it all comes down to. Either we will liberate these territories by force, or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories and stop fighting there,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Kremlin leader as saying in an interview with India’s India Today. The interview coincides with Putin’s visit to India, which started on Thursday, December 4.
According to the Russian president, residents of these regions of Ukraine “voted for independence”. “We told Ukraine right away, told the Ukrainian troops: people don’t want to live with you, withdraw your forces and there will be no hostilities. No, they preferred to fight, and now they’ve fought themselves into this,” Putin said.
The transfer of all of Donbas, including areas not occupied by Russian forces, to Russian control is one element of a plan to end the war in Ukraine proposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump
In the TASS headline about Putin’s interview, the Ukrainian territories he vowed to capture “in any case” are described as “Donbas and Novorossiya,” though in the interview with India Today he did not specify which regions he meant. From the context, it can be inferred he was referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The 28-point plan proposed by Trump envisions transferring Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Russian control. Meanwhile, Moscow has officially laid claim to territory in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions as well, and the Crimean Peninsula, annexed in 2014, along with almost all of Luhansk region, is already under its control. Ukraine rules out handing over its territory to Moscow but says it is ready to discuss a ceasefire along the current front line.
In the same interview, Putin confirmed that at a December 2 meeting at the Kremlin with representatives of the US President, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Russia did not agree with some points of the American plan. The sides “had to go through each point” of the peace initiative and could not reach consensus on several issues, Putin said. “There were such issues; we discussed them, but it is a difficult job. In some cases, we said yes, we can discuss this, but we cannot agree to that. That’s how the conversation went,” he explained.
The Russian president also said the original 28-point proposal “has hardly changed,” but the United States suggested splitting it into four separate “packages.” Earlier, after a meeting between representatives of Ukraine and the EU with the United States in Geneva, the number of points was reported to have been reduced to 19. The full texts of neither the 28 nor the 19 proposals have been published.
Putin called the meeting with Witkoff and Kushner “very useful.” US President Donald Trump also praised it, but Washington did not provide details on the substance of the talks.
Putin also rejected a point in the American peace plan that would see Moscow return to the Group of Seven (G7). He said he had “virtually stopped going to G8 summits” even before Russia’s exclusion in 2014. He did not attend summits from 2009 to 2012, when Dmitry Medvedev was Russia’s president, but Putin did take part in the 2013 meeting.
On December 4, it was announced that Putin’s large annual press conference and “Direct Line” will be held on December 19.
