According to the Washington Post, during a phone call with White House chief Trump on October 16, Russian President Putin again stated that control over the Donetsk region is a condition for ending the war in Ukraine.
According to the Washington Post, during a phone call with White House chief Trump on October 16, Russian President Putin again stated that control over the Donetsk region is a condition for ending the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a phone call with his American counterpart Donald Trump on October 16, reiterated that full control over the Donetsk region is a condition for ending the war in Ukraine. This was reported on Saturday, October 18, by the American newspaper The Washington Post (WP), citing two high-ranking officials familiar with the conversation.
According to the publication's sources, Putin's words indicate that he is virtually not retreating from his earlier demands, which have not led to a ceasefire, despite Trump's optimism. At the same time, the sources note that in exchange for full control over the Donetsk region, the Russian president expressed his readiness to abandon claims to the unoccupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. The Luhansk region is almost entirely controlled by the Russian army.
As WP notes, Putin's current territorial demands are "slightly less extensive" than those allegedly voiced during the meeting with Trump in Anchorage. Some White House representatives perceived this as progress, one of the two sources indicates. At the same time, the Ukrainian side is unlikely to share this opinion, believes another source from the publication - a high-ranking European diplomat. "It's like selling them your own leg for a pittance," he said.
According to officials cited by the newspaper, Trump's special representative Stephen Whitcoff, who has repeatedly negotiated with Putin in Moscow regarding Ukraine, insisted on transferring the Donetsk region under Russian control during a meeting with the Ukrainian delegation led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, which arrived in Washington. In particular, he pointed out that the region has a predominantly Russian-speaking population.
Officially, the White House and the Kremlin did not comment on this information.
Leave a comment