Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Vladimir Putin's 'crazy' ceasefire demands include blueprint for 'New Russia'

"France has spent decades preparing for Trump | If You're Listening | ABC In-depth"

By Riley Stuart and Europe bureau chief Mazoe Ford in London

2h ago
[...]
After marathon talks this week, the result was a flurry of mixed messages.

The summit between Russian and US officials on Monday was "not an easy dialogue", one of Moscow's representatives, Grigorii Karasin, told the state-run news outlet TASS.

US President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, described it as a "great meeting".

Delegations from both countries, as well as Ukraine, convened in Saudi Arabia, as they have done intermittently for weeks, to discuss a ceasefire.

But that's proving elusive. More than three years after Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbour, the slaughter continues with gusto.

As the talks were happening in Riyadh, Russia struck several targets in Ukraine's Sumy region, including a school and a hospital, wounding around 90 people.

Ukraine's military, meanwhile claims to have killed more than 900,000 Russian soldiers since February 2022.

The US and Russia say ceasefire negotiations are now focused on territory, and it's an issue the war's belligerents could not be further apart on.

Russia is demanding it gets ceded not only the land it currently occupies, but also hundreds of square kilometres of Ukrainian territory its troops have never set foot in.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has said on multiple occasions ceding any land to Moscow would be a red line for his country.

Russian newspaper Kommersant last week reported details of a closed-doors March 18 meeting held as part of President Vladimir Putin's appearance at a business summit in Moscow.

It claimed Mr Putin had told those present he would demand six Ukrainian regions (Crimea, Sevastopol, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia) be recognised as Russian as part of the ceasefire talks.

Russia's military currently occupies most, but not all, of those areas.

In September 2022, Mr Putin announced to Russia's parliament the territories had been officially annexed — something not recognised by the international community.

Vlad Mykhnenko, a professor of Geography and Political Economy at Oxford University, said the idea Ukrainian troops would withdraw from areas Russian counterparts had never been in was fanciful.

"The Russian side is putting up crazy claims and then probably trying to walk back from them. But it looks like the American administration is not pushing back at all," he said.

"I'm not sure what the strategy in Washington DC is, because obviously the Ukrainians aren't going to agree to these crazy demands."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-27/vladimir-putin-ceasefire-demands-include-new-russia-blueprint/105091560