Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview published on Thursday that Russia would take full control of Ukraine's Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw, something Kyiv has flatly rejected.
Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops in the Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
"Either we liberate these territories by force of arms, or Ukrainian troops leave these territories," Putin told India Today ahead of a visit to New Delhi, according to a clip shown on Russian state television.
Putin's visit to India, a historical partner of Russia, comes as international isolation of him gradually eases.
Ukraine says it does not want to gift its own territory that Russia has failed to win on the battlefield, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia should not be rewarded for a war it started.
Russia currently controls 19.2 per cent of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, all of Luhansk, more than 80 per cent of Donetsk, about 75 per cent of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
About 5,000 square kilometres of Donetsk remains under Ukrainian control.
In discussions with the United States over the outline of a possible peace deal to end the war, Russia has repeatedly said that it wants control over the whole of Donbas — and that the US should informally recognise Russia's control.
Russia in 2022 declared that the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were now part of Russia after referenda that the West and Ukraine dismissed as a sham. Most countries recognise the regions — and Crimea — as part of Ukraine.
Putin received US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the Kremlin on Tuesday, and said that Russia had accepted some US proposals on Ukraine, and that talks should continue.
Russia's RIA state news agency cited Putin as saying that his meeting with Witkoff and Kushner had been "very useful" and that it had been based on proposals he and US President Donald Trump had discussed in Alaska in August.
Why is Donetsk so important to Russia?
The remainder of Donetsk that Russia covets includes Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, "fortress cities" used by Ukraine's military as hubs since 2014.
They are vital to Ukraine's defence of the rest of the country as the land west of Donetsk is much flatter, with vast open fields, which would make it easier for Russia to advance beyond Donetsk and take territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river.
The cities are part of a heavily fortified line of defences, including trenches, anti-tank obstacles, bunkers and minefields that are located around them.
Zelenskyy has said that handing over the rest of Donetsk would be illegal without a referendum and give Russia a platform to launch assaults deeper into Ukraine in the future.
Kyiv fears that if it surrenders the rest of Donetsk, Russia would re-arm and at some point use Donetsk to sweep westwards.
Ukraine seeks 'complete information'
Witkoff, Trump's business partner-turned-roving global ambassador, and Kushner, the president's son-in-law, will meet in the Miami area for dinner late Thursday local time with the top Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, a US official said.
The gathering, which will be closed to the press, came two days after the Trump duo met with Putin for five hours, stretching into the early morning, in Moscow.
"Our task now is to obtain complete information about what has been said in Russia and what other reasons Putin has found to prolong the war and to pressure Ukraine, to pressure us, our independence," Zelenskyy said in an evening address from Kyiv.
"Ukraine is prepared for any possible developments. Of course, we will work as constructively as possible with all our partners to ensure peace is achieved, and that it is a dignified peace."
Trump said Wednesday that the envoys had a "reasonably good meeting" with Putin.
Pressed on whether Witkoff and Kushner got any sense that Putin genuinely wanted to halt the invasion, Trump replied: "He would like to end the war. That was their impression."
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