US-Russia-Ukraine war negotiations end without agreement
Second Marco Rubio said there had been progress in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
MOSCOW, Dec 19 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia’s terms for ending the war in Ukraine remained unchanged from those set out in June 2024 and there was no sign of compromise as the United States worked hard to resolve the conflict.
President Putin announced the Kremlin’s position at the beginning of his annual year-end press conference. This press conference is usually a marathon event lasting about four hours.
Although he said Ukraine was not ready to agree to a peace deal, he said there were “certain signs” that Ukraine was willing to engage in dialogue.
“The only thing I would like to say is that we have always said: We are ready and willing to end this conflict peacefully by addressing the root causes that gave rise to this crisis, based on the principles outlined at the Russian Foreign Ministry last June,” Putin said.
Assessing the battlefield situation
He was referring to a speech he gave 18 months ago in which he called on Ukraine to abandon its ambitions to join the NATO military alliance and completely withdraw from four regions that Russia claims as its own.
President Putin gave a detailed assessment of the situation on the battlefield, saying that Russia is advancing along the entire front, and Ukrainian forces are retreating.
Ukraine said Russia’s gains were increasing incrementally and at the cost of heavy casualties. It said it was fighting back in places such as Kupiansk in the northeast, which Russia announced it had captured last month.
Kiev has long called for a ceasefire and said it does not believe Putin is serious about seeking peace. Russia insists that it is Ukraine that refuses to come to the negotiating table.
Almost four years on, the war is at a delicate crossroads as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes for a peace deal on terms that he fears will tilt Ukraine and its European allies toward Russia.
Russia said it was waiting to hear from Washington about how the draft peace proposal had been revised following consultations with the United States, Ukraine and European countries.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, sparking the biggest conflict between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peace negotiator, has complained that ending the Ukraine war is one of the elusive foreign policy goals of his presidency.
Ukraine has the upper hand in the early stages of the press conference
The status of the war and the question of when it will end dominated the first phase of the “Achievements of the Year” event, which President Putin has held in different formats in most years since 2001.
He typically uses it to answer dozens of questions about everything from price increases to nuclear weapons.
Some submissions were submitted by journalists, others by ordinary Russians, and can be submitted online or by phone. The Kremlin said it had received more than 2.6 million questions ahead of Friday’s event.
Attendees had to undergo coronavirus tests, which is still routine at meetings involving the 73-year-old President Putin, even years after the pandemic ended.
The move was greeted with satisfaction in Moscow, where European Union leaders decided on Friday to borrow cash to fund defenses against Russia for the next two years rather than use frozen Russian assets, avoiding division over an unprecedented plan to finance Kiev with Kremlin cash.
But they said they reserved the right to use Russian assets to repay the loan if Russia defaulted on paying war reparations to Ukraine.
President Putin has positioned the war as a watershed in relations with the West, arguing that he humiliated Russia by expanding NATO and encroaching on areas he considers Russia’s sphere of influence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
An end to the war could reunite Russia, which holds the world’s largest natural resources, from oil and gas to diamonds and rare earths, with the United States, just as Putin seeks to refocus competition with China, with whom he has an “unrestricted” partnership.
If the war continues, there will be more deaths, the economies of Ukraine, Russia and European powers will be exhausted, and the war will likely escalate.
U.S. officials said Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than 2 million casualties, including dead and wounded, since the war began. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has disclosed reliable estimates of losses.
(Guy Faulconbridge, Vladimir Soldatkin, Anton Kolodiaziny, Anastasia Teterereva, Philip Lebedev, Felix Wright, Darya Korsunskaya, Olesya Asta (Reporting by Khowa, Oksana Kobzeva, Dmitry Antonov, Gleb Bryansky, Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Mark Trevelyan and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Timothy Heritage)
