Moscow currently controls 17.5% of Ukraine’s land – and, from what Vladimir Putin says, it’s not that Russia will not give this up, but that it cannot give this up.
Speaking to Russian municipal heads on Tuesday, he said the current discussion of peace negotiations in the West are an “attempt to motivate us to abandon the gains that we have realised over the past year and a half”.
He added: “But this is impossible. Everyone understands that this is impossible.”
It is, of course, not impossible for Russia to remove its troops from the annexed areas.
Putin also alluded to his previous baseless claims that there is Nazism in the Kyiv government, by saying “such people... cannot win”.
He has used the excuse of “denazification” repeatedly as part of his justification for the invasion of Ukraine.
The president said any such peace talks would just have to involve “new realities” created by its forces on the ground.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pushing a peace formula recently in talks with Western leaders.
It would mean restoring the sovereignty of Ukraine’s land to Kyiv – including the peninsula of Crimea – and the complete withdrawal of Russian troops.
But Putin suggested this “so-called peace formula” included “prohibitive demands”.
According to Reuters news agency, Putin said: “Well, if they don’t want (to negotiate), then don’t!”
Putin has shown interest in peace negotiations before, but only on the terms that Russia “will not give up what is ours”.
For context, Russia and Ukraine have been internationally recognised as separate entities since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Russian president then took aim at the Ukrainian action on the frontline.
He said: “Now it is quite obvious, not only (Ukraine’s) counter-offensive failed, but the initiative is completely in the hands of the Russian armed forces.
“If this continues, Ukrainian statehood may suffer an irreparable, very serious blow.”
However, US-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, suggested this speech was not quite right.
In their assessment, Russian forces have regained the initiative throughout most of the frontline “but have not seized the battlefield initiative in Kherson”.
The experts also said: “The Kremlin appears to lack a consistent framing for current Russian offensive operations to present to the Russian public, despite the fact that Putin appears to be – at times – using his role as commander-in-chief of the Russian military as part of his election campaign.”