Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated on Monday, Jan. 20, that the Kremlin is willing to negotiate with the United States about the war in Ukraine but indicated that he maintains his demands for Ukraine’s full capitulation.
Putin convened a meeting of the Russian Security Council on January 20, at which he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated Russia’s willingness to engage in peace negotiations with the new US presidential administration under President Donald Trump. Putin caveated that any peace settlement should “eliminate the root causes” of the war in Ukraine.
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Lavrov defined these root causes on December 26 as NATO’s alleged violation of obligations not to expand eastward and the Ukrainian government’s alleged discrimination against ethnic Russians and Russian language, media, and culture within Ukraine.
Senior Kremlin officials, including Putin and Lavrov, have been reiterating in recent weeks that the Kremlin refuses to consider any compromises to Putin’s late 2021 and early 2022 demands, which include demands that Ukraine remain permanently “neutral” and not join NATO, impose severe limitations on the size of the Ukrainian military, and remove the current Ukrainian government.
Putin himself stated on December 26 that then US President Joe Biden suggested to him in 2021 that Ukraine’s NATO membership be postponed by 10 to 15 years — further demonstrating that alleged threats from NATO expansion did not actually drive Putin to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 20, 2025
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