Russian president Vladimir Putin offered no compromise on his terms for ending the war in Ukraine on Friday and accused the European Union of attempting “daylight robbery” of Russian assets.
Mr Putin set out the Kremlin’s stance on the war in the opening moments of his annual end-of-year press conference, a marathon event that typically runs for some four hours.
He said he did not see readiness on the Ukrainian side to agree a peace deal, but there were “certain signals” it was willing to engage in dialogue.
“The only thing I want to say is that we have always said this: we are ready and willing to end this conflict peacefully, based on the principles I outlined last June at the Russian ministry of foreign affairs, and by addressing the root causes that led to this crisis,” Mr Putin said.
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He was referring to a speech 18 months ago in which he demanded that Ukraine abandon its ambition of joining the Nato military alliance and withdraw entirely from four regions that Russia has claimed as its own territory. Kyiv refuses to give up land that Moscow’s forces have failed to capture in nearly four years of war.
Mr Putin was speaking hours after European Union leaders set aside a plan to use frozen Russian assets as backing for a loan to Ukraine, deciding instead to borrow cash to help fund Kyiv’s defence against Russia for the next two years.
The EU leaders said they reserved the right to use Russian assets to repay the loan if Moscow fails to pay war reparations to Ukraine.
Mr Putin said the bloc had backed away from the original scheme because it would have faced serious repercussions, and it had damaged its status as a safe place to store assets.
“Theft is not the appropriate term ... It’s daylight robbery. Why can’t this robbery be carried out? Because the consequences could be grave for the robbers,” he said.
“This isn’t just a blow to their image; it’s an undermining of trust in the euro zone, and the fact that many countries, not just Russia, but primarily oil-producing countries, store their gold and foreign exchange reserves in the euro zone.”
After nearly four years, the war stands at a delicate juncture as US president Donald Trump pushes for a peace deal on terms that Ukraine and its European allies fear will be slanted towards Russia.
Russia says it is waiting to hear from Washington how its draft peace proposals have been modified following consultations between the United States, Ukraine and the Europeans.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, triggering the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
Mr Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has complained that ending the war in Ukraine has been one of the elusive foreign policy aims of his presidency.
The state of the war – and the question of when it will end – dominated the first phase of the “Results of the Year” event, which Mr Putin has held in different formats most years since 2001.
He typically uses it to field dozens of questions on everything from price rises to nuclear weapons.
Some are posed by journalists and others by ordinary Russians, who can submit them online or by phone. The Kremlin said it had received more than 2.6 million questions in advance of Friday’s event.
Attendees had to undergo a Covid test – still routine for meetings involving Mr Putin, 73, several years after the end of the pandemic.
In a move greeted with satisfaction in Moscow, European Union leaders decided on Friday to borrow cash to fund Ukraine’s defence against Russia for the next two years rather than use frozen Russian assets, sidestepping divisions over an unprecedented plan to finance Kyiv with Russian sovereign cash.
But they said they reserved the right to use Russian assets to repay the loan if Moscow fails to pay war reparations to Ukraine.
Mr Putin casts the war as a watershed moment in relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging Nato and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
An end to the war could reconnect Russia – which holds some of the world’s biggest reserves of natural resources from oil and gas to diamonds and rare earths – with the US just as it seeks to refocus on competition with China, with whom Mr Putin has forged a “no limits” partnership.
A continuation of the war could lead to many more deaths, drain the economies of Ukraine, Russia and European powers, and raise the chances of the war escalating.
US officials say that Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than two million casualties, including dead and wounded since the war began. Neither Russia nor Ukraine discloses credible estimates of their losses. – Reuters
