President Vladimir Putin has said either Ukrainian troops will withdraw from the country’s eastern Donbas region or Russia will seize it – rejecting any compromise over a major obstacle to ending the Ukraine war.”Either we take back these territories by force, or eventually Ukrainian troops withdraw,” Putin told India Today.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out ceding territory, whether held by Russia or not.Putin’s comments come after President Donald Trump said his negotiators believed Russia’s leader “would like to end the war” after talks in Moscow on Tuesday. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who led the US side of the talks, is due to meet Ukraine’s negotiators in Florida.Trump said the talks were “reasonably good”, adding it was too soon to say what would happen as “it does take two to tango.”Russian forces now control some 85% of the Donbas. The original iteration of the US peace plan proposed to hand over areas of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Putin.In his India Today interview ahead of a state visit to Delhi, Putin also said that Moscow disagrees with parts of the US plan.”At times we said that yes, we can discuss this, but to that we can’t agree,” Putin said.He did not name the sticking points. At least two significant points of contention remain – the fate of Ukrainian territory seized by Russian forces and security guarantees for Ukraine.Putin said Moscow had not seen a modified version of the US peace plan before his nearly five-hour talks with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.”That’s why we had to go over every point, that’s why it took so long,” Putin said.Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser and key negotiator Yuri Ushakov earlier said the Kremlin talks produced “no compromise” on ending the war.Ushakov also implied that the Russian negotiating position had been strengthened thanks to what Moscow said were its recent successes on the battlefield.But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybhia accused Putin of “wasting the world’s time”, while Ukra …
