"It all comes down to one thing: either we will reclaim these territories by force, or in the end, the Ukrainian troops will leave," Putin said in an interview with India Today while on a state visit to India.
Russia already controls a large part of Donbass — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, annexed by the Kremlin.
Putin's comments followed a series of meetings initiated by American diplomacy. Donald Trump's efforts, however, once again encountered mutually unacceptable demands from both sides.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated back in August that giving up Donbass would open the door for Putin to "start a third war" in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the President of Russia held five hours of negotiations with Trump's special envoy Steve Whitcoff and American President's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Putin called them "necessary and useful," but also "a difficult job," and some of Washington's proposals turned out to be unacceptable:
"We had to go through almost all the points, so it took so much time. It was a substantive, very specific, and focused conversation. Sometimes we said, 'Yes, we can discuss this, but we cannot agree on that,'" Vladimir Putin told Indian journalists.
Donald Trump, for his part, reported that Whitcoff and Kushner had a "strong impression that Putin would like to make a deal."
However, Putin himself, in India, where he arrived for the first time since the start of the war, did not openly show any signs of a willingness to compromise. He refused to disclose details of what Russia might accept or reject, only stating that the initial U.S. peace proposal of 28 points had been reduced to 27 and divided into four packages.
Against the backdrop of such results, European leaders, who feel sidelined in the negotiation process led by the U.S., accused Putin of feigned interest in Trump's peace initiative.
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