The whole Donbas for Russia, we can talk about the rest. Putin: The US has shown weakness

Russian leader Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with a group of leading businessmen that he might be open to exchanging some of the territories controlled by Russian troops in Ukraine, but emphasized that he wanted the entire Donbas, the Kommersant daily reported on Friday.

According to the newspaper, at the meeting on December 24, Putin was to ensure that the Russian side was still ready for the concessions he proposed in August in talks with US President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska. At the same time, he had to emphasize that Donbas belongs to Russia, and “the issue of Kramatorsk, Konstantinivka, Slavyansk is not subject to discussion”.

Russian troops currently control almost the entire Luhansk Oblast and most of the Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. The most important cities in Donbas that are managed by the Ukrainian authorities remain Kramatorsk, Slovyansk, Konstantinivka and Druzhkivka.

According to “Kommersant”, Putin also said that The Americans withdrew some of their own proposals as a result of negotiations with European countries, which he assessed as a “sign of weakness”.

The Russian leader was also supposed to raise the issue of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, occupied by Russia since 2022. According to “Kommersant” reports, Putin said that joint management of this plant by the US and Russia, without the participation of Ukraine, was being discussed. He also allegedly said that the United States had expressed interest in mining cryptocurrencies near the power plant and that, according to the US, part of the energy produced by the plant should be transferred to Ukraine.

Reuters recalled that in a statement published on Wednesday by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it was noted that Kiev and Washington had not reached an agreement on the part of Donbas that Ukraine still controls, or on the future of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. On Thursday, Zelensky said that the American proposal for joint management of the power plant by the US, Ukraine and Russia is “unfair”.

os/ akl/