Putin offers a truce if Ukraine leaves areas claimed by Russia and abandons its NATO candidacy. Kyiv rejects it

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Friday to “immediately” order a ceasefire in Ukraine and begin negotiations if kyiv begins to withdraw its troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and abandons its plan to membership of NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected what he called an ultimatum from Putin to cede more territory.

Putin's remarks come as Switzerland prepares to host dozens of world leaders – but not from Moscow – this weekend to try to chart the first steps towards peace in Ukraine.

They also coincided with a meeting of leaders of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations in Italy and after the United States and Ukraine signed a 10-year security agreement this week that Russian officials, including Putin, denounced as “null and void”.

Putin blasted the conference in Switzerland, calling it “just another ploy to divert everyone's attention, reverse the causes and effects of the Ukrainian crisis (and) set the debate on the wrong path.”

His demands were made in a speech to the Russian Foreign Ministry and aimed for what he called a “final resolution” to the conflict rather than “freezing it”, and stressed that the Kremlin was “ready to begin negotiations without delay “.

Broader peace demands listed by Putin included Ukraine's recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, maintaining the country's non-nuclear status, limiting its military force, and protecting the interests of the Russian-speaking population. . All of these should be part of “fundamental international agreements” and all Western sanctions against Russia should be lifted, Putin said.

“We call to turn this tragic page of history and begin to restore, step by step, unity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe in general,” he said.

Putin's remarks, made before a group of somber Foreign Ministry officials and senior lawmakers, represented a rare occasion in which he clearly laid out his conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, but they did not have included no new requirements. The Kremlin has already said kyiv should recognize its territorial gains and abandon its NATO candidacy.

Zelensky, in Italy for the G7 meeting, said Putin's proposal was not new and came in the form of an “ultimatum”, comparing it to Adolf Hitler's actions to seizing territories which led to World War II.

“What Putin demands is to give them part of our territories, occupied and unoccupied, speaking of several regions of our country,” he said.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called Putin's plan “manipulative,” “absurd” and designed to “mislead the international community, undermine diplomatic efforts to achieve a just peace and divide the unity of the majority world around the objectives and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. »

In addition to seeking to join NATO, Ukraine wants Russian forces to leave its territory, including the Crimean peninsula which was illegally annexed in 2014; the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine; and that Russia be held accountable for war crimes and that Moscow pay reparations to kyiv.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. After Ukrainian forces thwarted the Russian advance toward the capital, much of the fighting was concentrated in the south and east, where Moscow illegally annexed four regions, even if it does not fully control any of them. two.

Zelensky's adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on social media that there was nothing new from Putin and that the Russian leader “only expressed the 'aggressor standard' , which has already been heard several times”.

“There is nothing new in this, no real peace proposal and no desire to end the war. But there is a desire not to pay for this war and to continue it in new forms. This is all a complete sham,” Podolyak wrote on X.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told NATO headquarters in Brussels that Putin “illegally occupied Ukrainian sovereign territory. He is not in a position to dictate to Ukraine what it must do to achieve peace.”

Austin added that Putin “started this war without provocation. He could end it today if he chose to do so.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added: “This is not a peace proposal. This is a proposal for more aggression, more occupation, and it demonstrates in a way that Russia's goal is to control Ukraine.”

Putin insisted that kyiv should withdraw entirely from the four annexed regions and essentially cede them to Moscow within their administrative borders. In Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, Russia still does not control the region's administrative capital, which had a population of around 700,000 before the war; in the neighboring Kherson region, Moscow withdrew from its largest city and capital of the same name in November 2022.

Putin said that if “kyiv and Western capitals” rejected his offer, “it is their business, their political and moral responsibility to continue the bloodshed.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly said it is ready to begin peace talks with kyiv and has accused the West of undermining its efforts to end the conflict.

Putin went further on Friday and said his troops never intended to storm the Ukrainian capital, kyiv, even if they had come close.

“In essence, this was nothing more than an operation to force peace from the Ukrainian regime. The troops were there to push the Ukrainian side to negotiate, to try to find an acceptable solution,” he said.

Moscow withdrew from kyiv in March 2022 and described it as a gesture of goodwill as peace talks between the two countries began, but the withdrawal took place amid fierce Ukrainian resistance that has significantly slowed Russia's advance on the battlefield.

Putin also claimed that in the same month he told a foreign official that he did not rule out withdrawing his forces from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and ceding the occupied parts of them to Ukraine, to as much as kyiv allows Russia to have a “strong land”. connection” with Crimea.

He said the official planned to present that proposal to kyiv — which Moscow “welcomed,” just as it generally welcomed “attempts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.” But the Kremlin then annexed the two regions, as well as the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, citing the results of mock “referendums” it had organized there. Putin mentioned them and said: “The case is definitely closed and is no longer subject to discussion. »

In Friday's fighting, Russian defenses shot down 87 Ukrainian drones, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said, with most of them launched against the Rostov region, home of Russia's Southern Military Command, but none No deaths or damage were reported during one of Ukraine's largest drone barrages. of the war.

In the Russian border region of Belgorod, part of a residential building collapsed in the town of Shebekino after Ukrainian shelling, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Three people were injured, he said.

Ukraine's military has been lagging in recent months, with troops outnumbered by the Kremlin's forces and short of ammunition and weapons due to delays in promised Western military aid.

Russia has attacked Ukraine with drones, notably on its electricity grid. It fired 14 missiles and 17 Shahed drones overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Air defense systems shot down all the drones as well as seven missiles, the statement said.

The attacks injured six people in the Donetsk region, where residential buildings were hit, officials said.

A Russian drone hit a bus near the village of Esman in the northern Sumy region, injuring three women. Authorities say there were 20 passengers on the bus at the time.

Also on Friday, Russia returned the bodies of 254 of its soldiers to Ukraine, kyiv said. Once identified, the bodies will be returned to their next of kin, according to Ukraine's coordinating headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war — Associated Press writers Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Samya Kullab and Illia Novikov in kyiv, Ukraine, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Barry. Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed. ___ Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at