RUSSIA READY TO TAKE UKRAINE’S EASTERN DONBAS REGION ‘BY FORCE’ SAYS PUTIN

Fri 05 December 2025:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said recent talks with United States negotiators over ending the war with Ukraine were “very useful”, while doubling down on the maximalist demands and territorial designs that are standing in the way of a solution.

In advance of a trip to New Delhi on Thursday, Putin told India Today TV that he planned to seize control of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region by force, confirming Kremlin reports that no consensus had been reached in the previous day’s talks with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

“It all boils down to this: either we will liberate these territories by force, or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories and stop fighting there,” he said in comments from the interview that were carried by state news agency Tass on Thursday.

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, comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

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His renewed determination to take the region appeared to pour cold water on US President Donald Trump’s earlier assertion that Witkoff and Kushner had thought the Russian leader wanted “to end the war”.

“Their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal,” Trump said.

Putin’s comments came amid reports that special envoy Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner will meet top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov in Florida on Thursday as a follow-up to the five hours of talks in Moscow on Tuesday.

Embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been bogged down by Russia’s advance and a domestic corruption scandal, maintains that he does not have the power to sign away Ukrainian territory and that Russia should, in any case, not be rewarded for its invasion. The Ukrainian constitution also forbids the ceding of territory.

Russian attacks on civilian areas of Ukraine continued overnight into Thursday.

A ballistic missile struck Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday night, injuring six people, including a three-year-old girl, according to city administration head Oleksandr Vilkul.

Russia also struck Odesa with drones, injuring eight people, while civilian and energy infrastructure was damaged, said the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Kiper.

On Thursday, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of disrupting peace talks with attacks on oil tankers in the Black Sea and on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in Novorossiysk.

By Al Jazeera Staff and News Agencies

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