Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Moscow would end its Ukraine offensive if Kyiv withdrew from territory Moscow claims at its own – otherwise they would take it by force.
The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine in costly battles against outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces.
Washington has meanwhile renewed its push to end the nearly four-year war, putting forward a surprise plan that it hopes to finalise through coming talks with Moscow and Kyiv.
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“If Ukrainian forces leave the territories they hold, then we will stop combat operations,” Putin said during a visit to Kyrgyzstan. “If they don’t, then we will achieve it by military means.”
Russia controls around one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory. The issue of occupied land, which Kyiv has said it will never cede, has become the key stumbling block in the peace process.
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Putin repeated the claim that Russia had encircled the Ukrainian army in Pokrovsk and Myrnograd in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region – the most fiercely embattled area and a key target for Moscow’s forces.