President Vladimir Putin declared yesterday that Russia would only consider ending the conflict in Ukraine if Kyiv abandoned its aspirations to join NATO and ceded control of the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow. These demands were swiftly dismissed by Kyiv as unacceptable terms for surrender.

On the eve of a conference in Switzerland to which Russia has not been invited, Putin set out maximalist conditions wholly at odds with the terms demanded by Ukraine, apparently reflecting Moscow’s growing confidence in its military position.

He restated his demand for Ukraine’s demilitarisation, unchanged from the day he sent in his troops on February 24, 2022, and said an end to Western sanctions must also be part of a peace deal. He also repeated his call for Ukraine’s “denazification”, based on what Kyiv calls an unfounded slur against its leadership.

Responding to Putin’s ultimatum, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak characterized the conditions as tantamount to demanding Ukraine’s surrender and relinquishment of its sovereignty. He emphasized that there is no room for compromise based on Putin’s proposals.

There was “no possibility to find compromise” on the basis of what Putin had proposed, he said.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg criticized Putin’s conditions for initiating peace talks, describing them as a call for “more aggression, more occupation,” according to AFP reports.

The timing of Putin’s speech was clearly intended to pre-empt the Swiss summit, billed as a “peace conference” despite Russia’s exclusion, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks a show of international support for Kyiv’s terms to end the war.