MOSCOW, June 29 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday that Russia has not changed its stance on the conditions needed for a peace deal in Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin said in 2024 that Kyiv’s forces had to withdraw from four regions Moscow says are its own and publicly drop its plans to join NATO.
Putin said in a television interview at the weekend that Russia would press ahead with its battlefield aim of fully controlling the four regions, rejecting what he said was a new proposal by Ukraine to rein in hostilities in the more than four-year-old war.
Putin said in the same interview that Ukraine had proposed a mutual halt to long-range strikes and that fighting should be limited to the four regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – which Russia has claimed as its own, something Kyiv rejects as an illegal land grab.
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not immediately respond to a request, submitted during late-night hours in Ukraine, for comment on Putin’s remarks.
“Our position is well known. In fact, our position has not changed. It was set out two years ago by our Head of State in a speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is well known to the Kyiv regime, it is well known to the American negotiators, and it is entirely consistent,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov also said on Monday that Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had discussed the war in Ukraine in a weekend meeting before Lukashenko flew to China for talks.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Lucy Papachristou Editing by Andrew Osborn)
