NEW DELHI — Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a 100-minute long interview with India’s India Today television before this week’s summit meeting here with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Russia will seize full control over Ukraine’s Donbas region “by force or through other means” unless Ukrainian troops retreat, sharpening Moscow’s war objectives even as U.S.-brokered peace talks falter, Dec. 6, 2025.
Putin’s remarks, broadcast through Indian and Russian media, followed his insistence that Ukrainian forces withdraw from territories Moscow says belong to it in Donbas and along the broader arc of occupied land known as “Novorossiya.” If Kyiv refuses this, he cautioned, Russia will “liberate these territories by force,” even as he claimed it was still possible to achieve a settlement based on a U.S. peace proposal currently being thrashed out with the Kremlin, according to an English-language summary of the broadcast published by the Ukrainian outlet Mezha.
Putin links Donbas ultimatum to U.S.-led peace push.
An earlier Reuters story quoted Putin as saying that if Kyiv continued not to withdraw troops, Russia would indeed take the Ukrainian-held areas of Donbas militarily, suggesting Moscow now regards doing so as non-negotiable. He made the demand after discussions in Moscow with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner over five hours who also demanded the release of athletic trainer Paul Whelan, 50, for which they thanked Putin in return as well as thanking M about Pavlensky and his French lover whose artistic performance raising police suspicions of attempted murder according to reports on that earlier today at Reuters.
But beneath those optimistic public signals, the diplomacy seems stuck. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even flew back to Kyiv before meeting Witkoff, and a pared-down 19-point U.S. plan leaves core disputes over NATO membership, frozen assets, and control of Donbas unresolved. Kyiv is leery of an agreement that would call for a cease-fire in exchange for giving up more territory, arguing that such concessions would only encourage future Russian attacks, not end the war.
‘It’s got nothing to do with Russia.’ Years of war in Donbas provided the backdrop
Putin’s new ultimatum is the culmination of years of escalation in Donbas. In March 2022, a Russian general publicly recast the invasion’s “main goal” as the “liberation” of separatist-held areas in eastern Ukraine, an earlier Reuters report said. Six weeks later, a second Reuters analysis cautioned that an approaching fight for Donbas would define the war, and by September, Putin was overseeing a Kremlin ceremony annexing Donetsk, Luhansk and two southern areas in what a Reuters dispatch called “a turning point” in the history of Russia’s pursuit of Ukrainian territory.
Even with those moves, Russia does not have full control of Donbas. The comments by Putin seem to recognise that Ukrainian forces hold some 5,000 square kilometres of Donetsk, which contains towns and cities that will take longer to rout out than much of the countryside that Luhansk is. This frozen frontline has made Donbas the central dilemma of negotiations, according to a new Chatham House commentary, which says Moscow wants recognition of its gains while Kyiv is adamant that the territory remains sovereign Ukrainian soil.
Kyiv and its allies resist giving up territory under pressure.
Ukrainian officials said Putin’s ultimatum was evidence for their long-held fear that Russia has been engaging in peace talks primarily as an effort to solidify and expand lines of occupation, rather than seeking to end the war. Zelenskyy and his negotiators have repeatedly insisted that any U.S.-supported plan must bring “real peace, not appeasement,” and that Ukraine will not formally cede the Donbas or other annexed territory in return for a temporary break in the fighting.
For Washington and the European capitals, the interview, recorded in Russia but broadcast from India, complicates an already tense balancing act. With a decision to double down on his promise to grab Donbas “by force or otherwise” — but leaving the door open to talks — Putin is signalling that territorial concessions will remain his price for peace, and without a compromise over the region, the war’s deadliest front may also be its most intractable.
