Putin intends to continue seizing Ukrainian
4 December 13:11
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has vowed to continue his seizure of Ukrainian territory. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR and LPR) “will be liberated in any case,” Putin said. “It all comes down to this. Either we will liberate these territories by force. Either Ukrainian troops will leave these territories and stop fighting there,” the Kremlin leader said in an interview with India Today. The interview is timed to coincide with Putin’s visit to India, which will begin on Thursday, December 4, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
According to Putin, residents of these regions of Ukraine “voted for independence.” “We immediately told Ukraine, the Ukrainian troops: people do not want to live with you, withdraw your troops and there will be no military action. No, they preferred to fight, and now they have won,” Putin said.
The transition of the entire Donbas, including the territories not captured by Russian troops, under Russian control is one of the points of the plan to end the war in Ukraine proposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Seizure of “Donbas and Novorossiya”
The dictator promised to seize the regions in any case, but in the interview with India Today he did not specify which regions he was talking about. The context suggests that Putin was referring to Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The 28-point plan proposed by Trump envisages the transfer of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine to Russian control. At the same time, Moscow officially claims the territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, while Crimea, annexed in 2014, and almost the entire Luhansk region are already under its control. Ukraine excludes the transfer of its territories to Moscow, but declares its readiness to discuss a ceasefire along the current front line.
The US has proposed dividing Trump’s plan into four separate “packages”
In the same interview, Putin confirmed that at a meeting with US Presidential representatives Steve Vitkoff and Jared Kushner on December 2 in the Kremlin, Russia did not agree with some points of the US plan to end the war. The parties “had to go through every point” of the peace initiative, and no consensus was reached, Putin said. “There were such issues, we discussed them, but this is a difficult job. Somewhere we said that yes, we can discuss this, but we cannot agree to this. This is the way the conversation went,” he explained.
Putin also said that the first 28-point proposal “has not changed much,” but the United States proposed to divide it into four separate “packages.” Earlier it was reported that after the meeting of representatives of Ukraine and the EU with the United States in Geneva, the number of points was reduced to 19. The full texts of neither the 28 nor the 19 proposals have been officially published.
Putin called the meeting with Vitkoff and Kushner “very useful.” U.S. President Donald Trump also praised it, but the American side did not give any explanations on the substance of the talks.
Putin’s attitude to the idea of returning to the G7
The Russian dictator also rejected the clause of the American peace plan that provides for Moscow’s return to the Group of Seven (G7). Putin said that he had “practically stopped going to G8 summits” even before Russia’s expulsion in 2014. He did not really participate in the summits from 2009 to 2012, as Dmitry Medvedev was president of the Russian Federation during this period, but in 2013 Putin did attend the meeting.
on December 4, it was announced that a large press conference and a “direct line” by Vladimir Putin would take place on December 19.
