As well as withdrawing from the four occupied regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Putin said Ukraine must demilitarize and that Western countries must lift their sanctions on Russia, which have damaged but not crippled its economy. Nearly 28 months later, Russia occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula it annexed a decade ago. Moscow only controls these regions partially, but claimed the whole of each region was part of Russia’s territory in 2022. He asked that his terms for ending the war would need to be cemented in international agreements. “That is why we must not trust these messages, because Putin follows the same course,” Zelensky warned.

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Persons: Vladimir Putin, Putin, ”, Volodymyr Zelensky, Louisa Gouliamaki, ” Putin’s, Zelensky, Adolf Hitler, ” Zelensky, “, Hitler, ‘, Mykhailo Podolyak, ” Podolyak Organizations: CNN, NATO, Reuters, Sky Tg24 Locations: Russia, Ukraine, Moscow, Switzerland, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Italy, Europe, Czechoslovakia, Sudetenland, Swiss