preložiť Russia has presented the US with a list of demands to end the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports. Peace talks are doubtful
Russia has submitted to the United States a list of demands that it is making conditional on an agreement to end the war in Ukraine and restore relations between Moscow and Washington. Reuters wrote this on Wednesday night (13 March), citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Moscow's requirements
However, it is not yet clear what exactly Moscow is demanding and whether it is willing to start peace talks with Kiev before agreeing to its terms, she said.
Russian and U.S. officials have discussed Moscow's terms in face-to-face and online talks over the past three weeks, sources told Reuters. In doing so, they described Russia's demands as general and similar to those the Kremlin has made to Ukraine, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation before.
Among them, Russia included a Western commitment that Ukraine would not become a NATO member in the future and that no foreign troops would be deployed in Ukraine, as well as a demand that the international community recognize Crimea and the four occupied regions of Ukraine as part of Russia, Reuters recalled.
In recent years, Russia has also demanded that the United States and NATO address what the Kremlin calls the "root causes" of the war, including NATO's eastward expansion. Russia launched an unprovoked military invasion of the neighboring country in February 2022 on the direct orders of President Vladimir Putin.
Trump is waiting for Putin
U.S. President Donald Trump is now waiting for Putin to say whether he will agree to a proposed immediate 30-day ceasefire, which his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday described as the first step toward peace talks after a meeting of U.S. and Ukrainian delegations in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, Trump said he had received positive news in that regard and expressed hope that Putin would accept the proposal for a cease-fire, as did Zelensky. U.S. officials, he said, are already on their way to Russia to negotiate a cease-fire there.
But some U.S. officials, lawmakers and experts fear that Putin, a former KGB officer, will in fact use the ceasefire to step up his efforts to drive a wedge between the U.S., Ukraine and Europe and scuttle any peace talks, Reuters added.