On the eve of last weekend’s Global Peace Summit in Switzerland, Vladimir Putin unveiled a peace proposal of his own. The presentation of this rival peace plan was an obvious attempt to undermine Ukraine’s Swiss initiative, but it also served as a timely reminder that Putin is waging an old-fashioned war of imperial conquest and will continue to escalate his demands until he is defeated. Putin’s uncompromising vision for a future peace in Ukraine was widely condemned, with Kyiv officials and world leaders rejecting it as an “ ultimatum .
” Crucially, the terms outlined by the Kremlin leader would leave around twenty percent of Ukraine under Russian control, including significant portions of the country that Putin’s army has so far been unable to capture. This new peace proposal is the latest example of the growing territorial demands that have accompanied Russia’s ten-year invasion of Ukraine. Time after time over the past decade, Putin has rejected accusations of an expansionist agenda, only to then escalate his invasion of Ukraine further.
As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox. When Russia first attacked Ukraine in February 2014, Putin insisted Moscow had no territorial ambitions beyond the seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. “We do not want to divide Ukraine,” he assured the watching world.
Within weeks, ho.
