Vladimir Putin has said Russia will not back down from its mission to “liberate its historic lands” and predicted the European “swine” backing Kyiv would ultimately lose power, in a speech that showed no readiness to compromise on the goals for his invasion of Ukraine.
Russia’s president told a gathering of senior defence ministry officials on Wednesday that his forces held the strategic advantage across the frontline and could step up their offensive almost four years into his full-scale invasion.
The comments underscored Mr Putin’s unwillingness to end the war on any terms other than the maximalist goals he set out when he ordered the invasion in 2022, which sought to all but end Ukraine’s existence as an independent state.
Mr Putin said Russia was open to US president Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal with Ukraine and said Europe would be forced to negotiate with Russia “as we inevitably grow stronger”.
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He accused the US of starting the war under Mr Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, and said Russia had successfully fended off western efforts to defeat it.
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“Everyone thought they would quickly destroy Russia. The European swine immediately joined in ... hoping to make a killing,” he said. Mr Putin said Russia was open to resuming diplomacy with the continent “if not with the current politicians, then when the political elites in Europe are replaced”.
The Russian president’s confidence about his army’s prospects on the battlefield did not suggest he would make concessions for the sake of peace.
“The goals of the special military operation will be achieved unconditionally,” Mr Putin said, using a euphemism for the war. “If the adversary and its foreign patrons don’t want to have a substantive discussion, then Russia will liberate its historic lands on the battlefield.”
Mr Trump said Kyiv and Moscow were “closer than ever” to striking a deal after Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, met US envoys and European leaders to draft a deal in Berlin earlier this week.
But Mr Zelenskiy admitted the US and Ukraine remained divided on territorial concessions that Putin has demanded from Kyiv as a condition to end his invasion.
US officials said Mr Trump believes he could convince Mr Putin to accept a ceasefire but have not revealed details of the security guarantees for Ukraine in the plan.
The Kremlin has said it will not accept any Ukrainian or European revisions to Mr Trump’s plan and demanded Ukraine withdraw its forces from the frontline Donbas region, where Kyiv at present controls about a third of the territory, ahead of any ceasefire.
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent told European Union officials in recent days that the US could impose additional sanctions on Russia targeting its oil exports and financial sector if Moscow refused to engage with the peace process, according to two people briefed on the discussions. The warning was first reported by Bloomberg.
Mr Putin’s reference to Russia’s “historic lands” indicated that he remained intent on capturing all four southeastern Ukrainian regions along the frontline that he attempted to annex in 2022.
The Russian president also said his forces would continue to press forward elsewhere across the frontline to create a “buffer zone” deterring Ukrainian attacks on Russia.
Andrei Belousov, Russia’s defence minister, told Mr Putin that the ministry’s “key task for the coming year is to maintain and increase the current pace of advance”.
He said Ukraine was “unsuccessfully” trying to retake Kupiansk, a frontline town in the Kharkiv region, even though Mr Zelenskiy visited the town last week and filmed a video in front of the tattered sign marking the city’s entrance. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
