The World Today
The Russian president remains firm in his remaining "fundamental" demands for negotiating a cessation of hostilities.
MADRID, 16 (EUROPA PRESS)
Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed keeping the entire Donbas region, which represents virtually all of eastern Ukraine, in exchange for halting his offensive in the southern front and halting further attacks in the rest of the country as one of the conditions for accepting a possible peace agreement with the Ukrainian government.
According to sources close to Putin's summit with US President Donald Trump in Alaska last Friday, at the time Ukrainian forces were withdrawing from the region — which includes the provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, partially incorporated into Moscow — the Russian president ordered an immediate halt to the offensive on the Zaporizhia and Kherson fronts in the south of the country, according to the Financial Times, NBC and Bloomberg.
These same sources indicate that Putin has promised to halt any other type of attack against Ukraine, such as the drone and cruise missile attacks he routinely carries out against the center and west of the country.
Putin conveyed this message to Trump yesterday, who spent the following hours communicating the offer to European leaders, in what the Russian president, again according to these sources, understands as a "territorial concession." However, the president also warned his American counterpart that he has not abandoned the rest of the so-called "fundamental" conditions for a definitive end to the conflict.
Moscow, it should be recalled, demands that Ukraine assume permanent status as a non-nuclear power, independent of NATO, with full guarantees for the Russian-speaking community and, above all, recognition of what Moscow calls "the new territorial reality" represented by the Ukrainian territories it has incorporated, much of which is in the Donbas, as well as Crimea.
It's worth remembering that Russian forces control approximately 70 percent of Donetsk, but the chain of cities in the west of the region remains under Ukrainian control and constitutes a crucial defensive belt, the surrender of which would leave the country extremely vulnerable in the event of a new offensive. As for Luhansk, Russian forces control virtually the entire region, except for a small portion in its far west.
"Security guarantees" were another prominent topic at the Alaska summit. In this regard, Trump told European leaders that Putin is, in principle, willing to accept some kind of international solution to protect Ukraine against a new Russian offensive, as long as it does not involve a NATO presence.
This scenario coincides with an estimate made by Trump this past Friday, before the Alaska summit. In comments to the US media during the flight to Anchorage, the US president contemplated the possibility of deploying a multinational force "with Europe and other countries," but never "in the form of NATO," an option the US president had already summarily ruled out. "There are things that will never happen, but as far as Europe is concerned, that possibility exists," he concluded.
Trump will convey all of this to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at their crucial meeting at the White House on Monday. According to sources close to the New York Times, Trump has extended an invitation to several "European leaders," starting with the heads of state and government of the so-called "coalition of the willing" to participate in a peace mission for Ukraine, primarily German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Zelensky, who has not formally commented on this information, nor has the White House, the Kremlin, or European diplomacy, has always stated his firm opposition to ceding territories to Russia as part of a possible peace agreement.
