To withdraw its troops from all the Ukrainian provinces claimed by Russia Before they may agree on a truce they asked for Ukraine Russian negotiators in the peace talks in Constantinople.
This request, along with others that the Ukrainian official said they were raised during Friday’s negotiations (16.05.2025), They go beyond the terms of a plan of peace agreement that the US proposed last month, after consultations with Moscow.
Talks in Constantinople, the first direct contacts between the two warring sides for three years, They ended with an agreement on an exchange of prisoners, but no truce agreement was reached. A Ukrainian source said yesterday that the Russians set terms, which they described as “unsustainable”, without going into details.
During an update today, the Kremlin’s press spokesman Dmitry Peskov He was asked about the terms which, according to the Ukrainian official, was raised by Moscow, but avoided answering, saying that the talks should be held in camera.
The Ukrainian official, who spoke under anonymity to disclose details of the talks, said the Russians proposed the following terms for a peacekeeping agreement:
* The withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Ukrainian regions Donetsk, Zaporizia, Hersona and Luhank And if it only takes place then then there will be a truce. The regions are in great or partial control by the Russian forces, but Ukrainian troops continue to fight to keep the remaining parts of these areas under their control. Such a request was not included in the draft agreement prepared by the US.
*The international recognition that five parts of Ukraine – the Crimea peninsula Appended in 2014, as well as the areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Hersona and Zaporizia, are Russian. The American plan had only proposed American de jure recognition of Crimea and American de facto recognition for areas controlled by Russians in other regions.
*Ukraine will become a neutral statewill not have weapons of mass destruction and the Kiev allies will not maintain any strengths on Ukrainian territory. This request was absent from the American proposal.
*All sides in the conflict deny their claims to receive compensation for war losses. The American proposal predicted that Ukraine would receive war compensation.
According to the Ukrainian official, Russian negotiators announced these requests orally and did not submit any documents that included these terms.