On December 4, 2025, Vladimir Putin arrived in India for a two-day visit. On the eve of the trip, he gave an interview to India Today at the Kremlin, where he declared that the territories of the “DNR” and “LNR” “will be liberated in any case” and again accused Ukraine of refusing to withdraw its forces from Donbas.
He added that residents of these regions had supposedly “voted for independence.” According to him, “we immediately told Ukraine, told Ukrainian troops: people do not want to live with you <…> pull your forces back and there will be no hostilities. No, they preferred to fight, and now they have fought their way to this.”
Attention
The full interview will air at 21:00 local time; at the time of publication, only excerpts had been released.
Vladimir Putin also said that Moscow had offered Kyiv the option of withdrawing its forces from Donbas and refraining from launching military action, yet, according to him, the Ukrainian side “prefers to fight.”
Judging by the context, he is referring to the events of February 2022, when Russia recognized the so-called “LDNR” and demanded that Ukrainian units pull back from the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The president again asserted that Russia will “liberate Donbas and Novorossiya” in any case, specifying that this would happen “by military means or otherwise.”
He said that his meeting with U.S. representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin ran long because the sides went through each element of the peace proposals in detail. Putin described the talks as “very useful and very necessary.”