RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia not seeking Ukraine’s surrender – Putin

Russia is not seeking Ukraine’s surrender, President Vladimir Putin has said.

During a plenary panel on Friday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin was asked whether Moscow has been seeking Ukraine’s “unconditional surrender,” as US President Donald Trump is demanding from Iran.

“We are not seeking the surrender of Ukraine. We insist on recognition of the realities that have developed on the ground,”Putin said, noting that the Ukraine conflict was “completely different”from the ongoing escalation in the Middle East.

During a Q&A session, Putin was also asked about Moscow’s military plans and the advance beyond the former Ukrainian territories that became part of Russia as a result of referendums in 2022. Putin did not give a direct answer, suggesting that in a certain sense, the entirety of Ukraine is Russian.

“I have said many times that I consider Russians and Ukrainians to be one people, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” he said, stressing that Moscow has never denied Ukraine’s right to be an independent country.

The president did not rule out seizing the Ukrainian city of Sumy and pushing the “buffer zone” designed to protect Russia’s border areas from attacks deeper into Ukrainian territory.

“We don’t have the goal of taking Sumy, but in principle, I don’t rule it out,” Putin stated.

Russian troops entered Sumy Region earlier this year, after expelling Kiev’s invasion force from Russia’s Kursk Region, which Ukraine attacked last August. According to the Russian president, the “buffer zone” in Sumy Region is 10-12km deep already.

The attack on Kursk Region has only created more problems for the already thinned-out Ukrainian troops, Putin said, adding that the ranks of Kiev’s military are currently filled to only 47% on average. The invasion of Kursk turned into a “catastrophe” for the Ukrainian military, which lost around 76,000 troops there, he went on to say.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Putin says 'the whole of Ukraine is ours' - in theory

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that in his view the whole of Ukraine was "ours" and cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border.

Ukraine's foreign minister denounced the statements as evidence of Russian "disdain" for U.S. peace efforts and said Moscow was bent on seizing more territory and killing more Ukrainians.

Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, more than 99% of the Luhansk region, over 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Asked about fresh Russian advances, Putin told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that he considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one people and "in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours".

Kyiv and its Western allies say Moscow's claims to four Ukrainian regions and Crimea are illegal, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly rejected the notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

He has also said that Putin's terms for peace are akin to capitulation.

Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, said on Friday he was not questioning Ukraine's independence or its people's striving for sovereignty, but he underscored that when Ukraine declared independence as the Soviet Union fell in 1991 it had also declared its neutrality.

Putin said Moscow wanted Ukraine to accept the reality on the ground if there was to be a chance of peace - Russia's shorthand for the reality of Russia's control over a chunk of Ukrainian territory bigger than the U.S. state of Virginia.

"We have a saying, or a parable," Putin said. "Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours."

'COMPLETE DISDAIN'

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, writing in English on the X social media platform, said: "Putin's cynical statements demonstrate complete disdain for U.S. peace efforts."

"While the United States and the rest of the world have called for an immediate end to the killing, Russia's top war criminal discusses plans to seize more Ukrainian territory and kill more Ukrainians."

Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, "he brings along only death, destruction, and devastation," Sybiha said.

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said Russia had shown "openly and utterly cynically that they 'don't feel like' agreeing to a ceasefire. Russia wants to continue the war."

Zelenskiy said commanders had discussed action in Ukraine's northern Sumy region and that Russia had "various plans and intentions, completely mad as always. We are holding them back and eliminating these killers, defending our Sumy region."

Putin said Russian forces were carving out a buffer zone in the Sumy region in order to protect Russian territory.

"Next is the city of Sumy, the regional centre. We don't have the task of taking it, but in principle I don't rule it out," he said.