Russia Will Take Donbas By Force If… — Putin

President Vladimir Putin has warned again that Ukrainian troops must withdraw from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region or Russia would seize it, rejecting any compromise over how to end the war in Ukraine.

“Either we liberate these territories by force, or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories,” he told India Today according to the BBC. Moscow controls some 85% of Donbas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out ceding territory. Putin’s comments came after Donald Trump said his negotiators discussing a US peace plan believed Russia’s leader “would like to end the war” after Tuesday’s talks in Moscow.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow, was due to meet Ukraine’s team in Florida.

Trump said Tuesday’s talks in the Kremlin were “reasonably good”, adding it was too soon to say what would happen as “it does take two to tango”.

The Kremlin said yesterday that Moscow was awaiting a response from Washington following the meeting in Russia.

“We are now waiting for the reaction of our American colleagues to the discussion we had on Tuesday,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying by RIA.

He added there were no plans for a call between Putin and Trump, and no date had been set for a new meeting with Witkoff.

The original iteration of the US peace plan proposed to hand over areas of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Putin – but the Witkoff team presented a modified version in Moscow.

In his India Today interview ahead of a state visit to Delhi, Putin said he had not seen the new version before his talks with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.