Putin vows Russia will take Donbas by force if Ukraine's troops will not withdraw

Russian President Vladimir Putin again warned on Thursday that his troops will take Ukraine's eastern Donbas by force if it is not ceded by Kyiv, describing some proposals in a US plan to end the war in Ukraine as unacceptable to the Kremlin.

Putin, who is on a state visit to India, said in an interview that the US proposals discussed at his meeting with US envoys were based on earlier discussions between Russia and the US, including his meeting with Trump in Alaska in August, but also included new elements.

He said that Russia will fulfil the goals it set and take all of the eastern Donetsk region. “All this boils down to one thing: Either we take back these territories by force, or eventually Ukrainian troops withdraw,” Putin told India Today.

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has always refused this demand, saying as recently as August that abandoning the Donbas region would open the door for Putin to “start a third war” in Ukraine.

Russia already controls most of Donbas — its name for Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk — that, along with two southern regions, it illegally annexed three years ago, but Ukraine says its troops continue to maintain firm control of areas under its control.

Putin's comments follow the latest flurry of meetings set in motion by US President Donald Trump in what has been the most intense diplomatic push to stop the fighting since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour nearly four years ago.

But the effort has once again run into demands that are hard to reconcile, especially over whether Ukraine must give up land to Russia and how it can be kept safe from any future aggression by Moscow.

The Russian leader's maximalist and uncompromising stance also came ahead of Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner's planned meeting with the Ukrainian delegation led by Rustem Umerov

There was no immediate confirmation whether that meeting took place.

Did the Ukraine talks with US officials hold?

The meeting at the Shell Bay Club, a golf property developed by Witkoff in Hallandale Beach, was tentatively set to begin at 5 p.m. EST, according to an official familiar with the logistics.

According to Putin, his five-hour talks Tuesday with Witkoff and Kushner were “necessary” and “useful,” but also “difficult work,” and some proposals were unacceptable.

“We had to go through practically every point, which is why it took so much time,” he said. “It was a meaningful, highly specific and substantive conversation. Sometimes we said, ‘Yes, we can discuss this, but with that one we cannot agree.’”

Trump said Wednesday that Witkoff and Kushner left the marathon session confident that Putin wants to end the war. “Their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal,” he added.

However, Putin, whose state visit to India is the first since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, has shown no signs of any compromise or intent to make a deal, refusing to elaborate on what Russia could accept or reject.

He has said the initial US 28-point peace proposal was trimmed to 27 points and split into four packages.

Amid the disappointing outcome of Putin's talks with US envoys, European leaders, left on the sidelines by Washington as US officials engage directly with Moscow and Kyiv, have accused Putin of feigning interest in Trump’s peace drive.

French President Emmanuel Macron met in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, seeking to involve him in pressuring Russia toward a ceasefire.

Xi, whose country has provided strong diplomatic support for Putin, did not respond to France’s call, but said that “China supports all efforts that work towards peace.”

Meanwhile, Russian barrages of civilian areas of Ukraine continued overnight into Thursday. A missile struck Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday night, wounding six people, including a 3-year-old girl, according to city administration head Oleksandr Vilkul.

The attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown damaged more than 40 residential buildings, a school and domestic gas pipes, Vilkul said.