Russian President Vladimir Putin made his demands clear on what it would take for him to cease military operations in Ukraine when speaking with President Donald Trump in Alaska less than one week ago, reports confirmed Thursday.
No NATO admittance, no Western troops in Ukraine and hand over the Donbas region — a litany of demands that Moscow has previously stated, but which it formally informed Washington of on Friday, sources familiar with the Kremlin’s negotiations told Reuters.
The report also claimed that Putin would agree to freeze the front lines where it currently stands in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, as well as relinquish some territory it has captured in the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
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Fox News Digital could not independently verify the update to the negotiations, though it is an apparent shift from a 2024 demand by Putin, who said Kyiv would need to hand over all four regions that Moscow illegally annexed in 2022, including Donetsk and Luhansk — where the Donbas sits — as well as Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.
But Putin’s apparent change in demand also comes following years of Russia’s inability to significantly move the front lines.
Following the initial invasion in February 2022, Russian forces were able to sweep large sections of territory. But by late summer that year, Ukraine began launching successful counter offenses where it recaptured significant portions of land in Kherson and Kharkiv.
But since 2023, the frontlines have remained largely stagnant, with Russia reportedly occupying less than 20 percent of Ukraine — an estimated seven percent of which was previously taken in 2014, when Russia fully occupied Crimea and parts of the Donbas.
Russian forces currently occupy some 88 percent of the Donbas, nearly all the Luhansk region and roughly 75 percent of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Russian-controlled territory in Sumy and Kharkiv is estimated to equate to roughly 150 sq. miles combined, and a fraction of this in Dnipropetrovsk.
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A senior NATO defense official pointed out that Putin’s wish list was not unexpected and voiced suspicion that he could add to his list of demands in the future.
“Whatever helps to stall,” the official, who spoke to Fox News Digital on the condition of anonymity, said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov raised geopolitical eyebrows this week when he claimed in a televised interview that Moscow has “never talked about the need to seize any territories.”
Instead, his comments escalated concern that Putin’s ultimate war aim is the control of Kyiv, rather than physical occupation of all of Ukraine – which Russian forces have been unable to achieve.
Lavrov said the Kremlin’s goal is to “protect” Ukrainians from their own government, and argued “there can be no talk of any long-term agreements” with Kyiv “without respect” for Russia’s security and the rights of Russian-speakers in Ukraine, reported the Institute for the Study of War this week.
“These are the reasons that must be urgently eliminated in the context of a settlement,” Lavrov added.
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Concern over Ukraine’s sovereignty and autonomy had been on the rise well before Russia’s 2022 invasion, particularly following the outbreak of massive protests in Belarus following the alleged 2020 re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko, a major ally of Putin and who has essentially extended Belarus as a puppet state to Russia.
Unease mounted in 2021 when Putin wrote an essay arguing that Ukraine, as well as Belarus, shouldn’t exist independently of Russia. By the end of the year, security experts were sounding the alarm that Putin intended to invade Ukraine.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions.
