Russian President Vladimir Putin promised Friday to “right away” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and get started negotiations if Kyiv started taking flight troops from the 4 areas annexed via Moscow in 2022 and renounced plans to enroll in NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected what he referred to as an ultimatum via Putin to give up extra territory.Putin’s remarks got here as Switzerland ready to host ratings of global leaders — however no longer from Moscow — this weekend to take a look at to map out first steps towards peace in Ukraine.Additionally they coincided with a gathering of leaders of the Team of Seven main industrialized international locations in Italy and after the U.S. and Ukraine this week signed a 10-year safety settlement that Russian officers, together with Putin, denounced as “null and void.”Putin blasted the Switzerland convention as “simply any other ploy to divert everybody’s consideration, opposite the purpose and impact of the Ukrainian disaster (and) set the dialogue at the fallacious monitor.”His calls for got here in a speech on the Russian International Ministry and was once geared toward what he referred to as a “ultimate solution” of the battle relatively than “freezing it,” and stressed out the Kremlin is “in a position to begin negotiations at once.”Broader calls for for peace that Putin indexed incorporated Ukraine’s reputation of Crimea as a part of Russia, conserving the rustic’s nonnuclear standing, limiting its army drive and protective the pursuits of the Russian-speaking inhabitants. All of those must be a part of “basic world agreements,” and all Western sanctions in opposition to Russia must be lifted, Putin mentioned.“We’re urging to show this tragic web page of historical past and to start restoring, step by step, the solidarity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe basically,” he mentioned.Putin’s remarks, made to a bunch of somber International Ministry officers and a few senior lawmakers, represented a unprecedented instance through which he obviously laid out his prerequisites for finishing the warfare in Ukraine, but it surely didn’t come with any new calls for. The Kremlin has mentioned earlier than that Kyiv must acknowledge its territorial positive factors and drop its bid to enroll in NATO.Zelenskyy, in Italy for the G7 assembly, mentioned Putin’s proposal was once no longer new and was once within the type of an “ultimatum,” evaluating it to movements via Adolf Hitler in seizing territory that resulted in Global Conflict II.“What Putin calls for is to provide them part of our territories, the ones occupied and no longer occupied, speaking about a number of areas of our nation,” he mentioned.Ukraine’s International Ministry referred to as Putin’s plan “manipulative,” “absurd” and designed to “deceive the world group, undermine diplomatic efforts geared toward reaching a simply peace, and cut up the solidarity of the sector majority across the targets and ideas of the U.N. Constitution.”But even so searching for to enroll in NATO, Ukraine desires Russian forces out of its territory, together with the Crimean Peninsula that was once illegally annexed in 2014; the recovery of Ukraine’s territorial integrity; and that Russia be held in command of warfare crimes and for Moscow to pay reparations to Kyiv.Russia introduced its a full-scale invasion in February 2022. After Ukrainian forces thwarted a Russian pressure to the capital, a lot of the combating has centered within the south and east, the place Moscow illegally annexed 4 areas, despite the fact that it doesn’t totally keep an eye on any of them.Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak mentioned on social media there was once not anything new from Putin and that the Russian chief “voiced most effective the ‘same old aggressor’s set,’ which has been heard again and again already.”“There’s no novelty on this, no actual peace proposals and no want to finish the warfare. However there’s a want to not pay for this warfare and to proceed it in new codecs. It’s all an entire sham,” Podolyak wrote on X.U.S. Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin mentioned at NATO headquarters in Brussels that Putin “has illegally occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory. He isn’t in any place to dictate to Ukraine what they should do to carry a few peace.”Austin added that Putin “began this warfare with out a provocation. He may just finish it nowadays if he selected to try this.”NATO Secretary-Common Jens Stoltenberg added that “this isn’t a peace proposal. This can be a proposal of extra aggression, extra career, and it demonstrates in some way that that Russia’s goal is to keep an eye on Ukraine.”Putin insisted that Kyiv must withdraw from all 4 annexed areas completely and necessarily cede them to Moscow inside their administrative borders. In Zaporizhzhia within the southeast, Russia nonetheless doesn’t keep an eye on the area’s administrative capital with a pre-war inhabitants of about 700,000; within the neighboring Kherson area, Moscow withdrew from its largest town and capital of the similar identify in November 2022.Putin mentioned if “Kyiv and Western capitals” reject his be offering, “it’s their industry, their political and ethical accountability for proceeding the bloodshed.”The Kremlin has many times aired its readiness for peace talks with Kyiv and blamed the West for undermining its efforts to finish the battle.Putin went additional Friday and claimed his troops by no means supposed to typhoon Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, despite the fact that they approached town.“In essence, it was once not anything instead of an operation to drive the Ukrainian regime to peace. The troops had been there to push the Ukrainian aspect to barter, to take a look at and to find a suitable answer,” he mentioned.Moscow withdrew from Kyiv in March 2022 and described it a goodwill gesture as peace talks between the 2 started, however the pullback came about amid fierce Ukrainian resistance that considerably bogged down Russia’s battlefield advances.Putin additionally claimed that during that very same month, he informed a international legitimate he wasn’t ruling out taking flight forces from the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas and ceding occupied portions of them again to Ukraine, so long as Kyiv allowed Russia to have a “sturdy land connection” to Crimea.He mentioned the legitimate deliberate on bringing that proposal to Kyiv — which Moscow “welcomed,” because it most often welcomed “makes an attempt to discover a non violent solution of the battle.” However the Kremlin then annexed each areas, in conjunction with the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, bringing up the result of sham “referendums” it staged there. Putin discussed the ones and mentioned, “The topic is closed without end and is now not up for dialogue.”In Friday’s combating, Russian defenses shot down 87 Ukrainian drones, the Protection Ministry in Moscow mentioned, maximum of them introduced in opposition to the Rostov area, house to Russia’s southern army command, however no deaths or harm had been reported in one of the most largest Ukrainian drone barrages of the warfare.In Russia’s Belgorod area at the border, a part of a residential construction collapsed within the the city of Shebekino after Ukrainian shelling, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov mentioned. 3 other people had been injured, he mentioned.Ukraine’s army has been at the again foot in fresh months, with its troops outnumbered via the Kremlin’s forces and working in need of ammunition and weaponry because of delays in promised Western army assist.Russia has battered Ukraine with drones, particularly its energy grid. It fired 14 missiles and 17 Shahed drones in a single day, Ukraine’s air drive mentioned. Air protection programs downed the entire drones in addition to seven missiles, it mentioned.The assaults injured six other people within the Donetsk area, the place residential structures had been hit, officers mentioned.A Russian drone struck a bus close to the village of Esman within the northern Sumy area, injuring 3 girls. Government say 20 passengers had been within the bus on the time.Additionally Friday, Russia returned to Ukraine the our bodies of 254 of its infantrymen, Kyiv mentioned. As soon as recognized, the our bodies might be returned to family members, in step with Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Remedy of Prisoners of Conflict —- Related Press writers Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Samya Kullab and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, Lorne Prepare dinner in Brussels, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed. ___ Observe AP’s protection of the warfare in Ukraine at
