Russia says West should negotiate end to Ukraine war based on current reality

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By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday, a day after Donald Trump became U.S. president-elect, that the West should accept Russia was winning the Ukraine war and negotiate an end to it.

Moscow’s forces have been advancing at their fastest pace since the early weeks of the 2-1/2-year-old war.

Trump said during campaigning that he could bring peace in Ukraine within 24 hours, but has given few details on how he would seek to do this.

Shoigu, an ally of President Vladimir Putin who had been defence minister since 2012 until Putin moved him in May, said the West had tried to use Ukraine to inflict strategic defeat on Russia but had failed.

“Now, when the situation in the theatre of military operations is not in favour of the Kyiv regime, the West is faced with a choice – to continue financing it and destroying the Ukrainian population or to recognise the current realities and start negotiating,” Shoigu said.

Putin on June 14 set out his terms for an end to the war: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from all the territory of four regions claimed by Moscow.

Russia controls Crimea, which it unilaterally seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas – a coal and steel producing area comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

TRUMP TAKES DIFFERENT VIEW OF UKRAINE WAR

Ukraine, which is backed by the United States and European powers, dismissed Putin’s conditions, but Trump has said he has different priorities to Joe Biden, who has insisted Ukraine should decide when and how to negotiate.

Kyiv’s official position is that it will not rest until every Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s transition team had proposed that Kyiv could promise not to join NATO for 20 years in exchange for Washington agreeing to arm it heavily to deter a Russian attack.

Russia says it will not comment on media reports, and that it would need to see the details of any plan before commenting.

The Kremlin reacted cautiously on Wednesday after Trump won the presidential election, saying the U.S. was still an unfriendly state and that only time would tell if his rhetoric on ending the war translated into reality.

Reuters reported in May that Putin was ready to halt the war with a negotiated ceasefire recognising current battlefield lines, but was prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West did not respond.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)