Russia 'not planning any concessions,' Putin says on peace talks with Ukraine

Any peace agreement to end Russia's war with Ukraine must be in Moscow's favor, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with state media on Oct. 25.

Ahead of Ukraine's first peace summit in June, Putin had outlined conditions for negotiations, which included Kyiv's surrender of the four oblasts illegally claimed by Moscow in September 2022. Russia has since said it will not engage in talks as long as Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk Oblast.

"Any outcome must be in Russia's favor, I say directly, without any embarrassment, and must be based on the realities on the battlefield. And without any doubt, we are not going to make any concessions here; there will be no swaps," Putin said.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine and Russia held talks in Istanbul in March 2022, but the negotiations were eventually abandoned after Ukrainian retook the north of the country and mass war crimes were discovered in the liberated areas.

In comments to Ukraine's Peace Summit in June this year, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Istanbul talks failed because of the Russian side's "ultimatums."

Moscow was not invited to the June summit in Switzerland, attended by over 90 countries, dismissing the discussions as irrelevant without its involvement. Following the event, Zelensky expressed hope for a follow-up meeting by the end of the year, with the goal of including Russia.

Yet, Moscow announced it would not participate in any future iterations of the Swiss-hosted peace summit, labeling the process a "fraud."

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Thirty years ago, in a Ukrainian churchyard where my Russian ancestors are buried, I knelt beside a very old woman leaning on a stick, her hair covered in a black kerchief. Behind us stood the Russian church that my great-grandfather built on his estate and where he lies buried. The

The Kyiv IndependentMichael Ignatieff