Ukraine needs to stay neutral for any chance of peace, says Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukraine needs to stay neutral for there to be any peace.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and continues to occupy around a fifth of the country. Putin has justified the invasion by claiming that Ukraine had embraced the West and an invasion was necessitated as it was fast becoming a Western outpost against Russia’s doorstep.

Earlier in 2014, Russia had invaded the Crimea region of Ukraine and annexed it.

Continuing the yearslong historical revisionism, Putin on Thursday said that Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s borders in 1992 was based on certain conditions that he said Ukraine later violated.

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“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” said Putin, as per Reuters.

Putin said that Ukraine has not been neutral despite the expectation that was behind the recognition of its borders. Instead, Putin said that Ukraine has been “constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation”.

Even though Ukraine is currently neither a member of the European Union (EU) nor NATO, it has said it would eventually join these blocs. Both the blocs have also said that Ukraine would eventually become a member.

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For there to be peace, Putin said that Ukraine would not just need to drop ambitions to join NATO but would also need to withdraw troops from Ukrainian territories claimed by Russia.

In 2022, Russia annexed four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine where both sides continue to fight today.

Putin said that Ukraine should not be an instrument of the West and its borders should be decided by Russians living there.

“We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests…The borders of Ukraine should be in accordance with the sovereign decisions of people who live in certain territories and which we call our historical territories,” said Putin.

In any sham elections or referendum that Russia holds in Ukrainian territories it controls, the results are bound to reflect Putin’s intended result.