MOSCOW. Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine withdraw completely from the Donbas region, abandon its bid to join NATO, remain neutral, and bar Western troops from entering the country, three sources familiar with Kremlin thinking told Reuters.
The terms were outlined during Putin’s first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in more than four years, held in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. The leaders spent much of their three-hour closed-door meeting discussing potential compromises on Ukraine, the sources said.
After the talks, Putin told reporters alongside Trump that the meeting could pave the way to peace in Ukraine, though neither leader gave details.
According to the sources, Putin’s latest proposal softens earlier demands that Kyiv cede all four occupied provinces, limiting territorial concessions to Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas while freezing frontlines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia currently controls about 88 percent of Donbas and 73 percent of the two southern regions. Moscow is also willing to relinquish small areas it holds in Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk, they added.
Putin’s conditions also include a binding halt to NATO expansion, restrictions on Ukraine’s armed forces, and guarantees that no Western troops will be deployed in Ukraine, even as peacekeepers.
Ukraine has consistently rejected such terms. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv cannot abandon the Donbas, describing it as a vital defensive line. He reaffirmed that NATO membership, enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, remains a core strategic goal.
Neither the White House nor NATO immediately commented. Analysts noted that Putin’s conditions remain politically and strategically unacceptable for Kyiv.
Despite the divisions, sources described the Alaska summit as the most serious discussion of peace terms since the war began, with Putin signaling a readiness to compromise. However, they cautioned that if Ukraine refuses to cede the remaining Donbas territory, the war will continue.
Russian forces currently occupy about a fifth of Ukraine, an area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Ohio, according to American estimates.
Trump, who has repeatedly pledged to end the conflict, said he was arranging a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, followed by a trilateral summit. “I believe Vladimir Putin wants to see it ended,” he said in Washington earlier this week.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry had no immediate comment.
Edgardo Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
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