By Mark Bendeich
ST PETERSBURG, Russia, June 4 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposals for peace in Ukraine could end the fighting, but said Kyiv needed to compromise — and that he saw no signs of that, so was ready to fight on to victory.
Speaking to foreign media editors on the sidelines of Russia’s annual economic forum in what is the fifth year of Europe’s deadliest land war since World War Two, Putin said Russia would defeat Ukraine on the battlefield if necessary.
But he said it was also ready to end the war via diplomacy, and to honour unspecified compromises he said had been agreed with Trump at a summit in Alaska last year.
He showed no signs of changing his stance that for the war to end, Ukraine must surrender the rest of its eastern Donbas region – a demand that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has rejected as akin to capitulation.
“The offensive is ongoing on a daily basis. At present, the Russian Federation has taken full control of the Luhansk People’s Republic – 100%. And Russia has brought over 85% of the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic under its control,” he said, referring to two of the four regions in Ukraine which Moscow claimed as its own in 2022 in a move Kyiv and most Western countries rejected as an illegal land grab.
“We are certainly prepared and willing to reach an agreement with Ukraine through peaceful means. Specifically, on the basis we discussed during our meeting with President Trump in Anchorage. Russia agrees to those compromises we discussed in Anchorage. The Ukrainian side must also agree to these compromises. Then the conflict will quickly come to a natural conclusion,” Putin said.
Putin said Russia’s own resources to wage and win the war were strengthening and that it had weapons which Ukraine simply did not possess. While he conceded that Moscow needed to do more to protect itself against Ukrainian drones, he made it clear that he thought time was on Russia’s side and that Ukraine did not have the manpower to prevail.
“And there is one more thing that is of paramount importance: the patriotism and resolve of the Russian people, which are essential to achieving the objectives and tasks of the special military operation,” said Putin, using the phrase Russia uses to describe its war.
Putin said that Russia had not yet used its Oreshnik hypersonic missile against Ukraine in real combat conditions, but had only test-fired it to observe the results in order to make decisions about its future full-scale use, including against urban targets.
The Oreshnik, which Russia first fired against Ukraine in 2024, is a nuclear-capable missile with a range of over 5,000 km (3,100 miles). Putin has said before that it is impossible to intercept, though Western experts have questioned that assertion.
Putin sidestepped a question about his own political future beyond the end of his current term in 2030, saying his health was in God’s hands.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Dmitry Antonov, Anastasia Lyrchikova, Darya Korsunskaya, Maxim Rodionov and Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelya, Guy Faulconbridge and Daniel Wallis)
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