Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will only put an end to its war in Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders the entire territory of four regions claimed by Moscow and abandons its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), CNN reported. Ukraine has rejected Putin's demand and termed it a "complete sham" and "offensive to common sense." In his remarks on Friday, Putin mentioned Russia's conditions for a "final end" to the war in more granular detail than at any previous time since the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv started in February 2022.

Putin's speech came on the eve of the Swiss peace conference set to be held in Switzerland, where Russia has not been invited. He called the conference "another ploy to divert everyone's attention." In addition to Ukrainian soldiers withdrawing from four regions, Putin said that Kyiv must demilitarise and that Western nations must lift their sanctions on Russia.

Putin's demand indicates Russia's failure to achieve its original war aims, when Moscow believed it could capture Kyiv in days and the rest of Ukraine in weeks, CNN reported. However, Russia, nearly 28 months later, occupied around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula it annexed 10 years back. In comments to the foreign ministry, Putin termed Russia's conditions for peace talks "simple," starting with the total withdrawal of Ukraine's soldiers from the entire territory of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions.

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