Putin says Ukraine must surrender to Russia to start peace talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded Ukraine effectively surrender to Moscow if it wants to open peace talks, drawing anger and rebukes from Kiev and the West.

In a combative speech in Moscow on the eve of a major Ukraine "peace summit" in Switzerland, Putin said on Friday Russia would halt its offensive only if Ukraine fully withdraws its troops from the east and south and drops its bid for NATO membership.

"Ukrainian troops must be completely withdrawn from the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions," Putin said in a televised address to Russian diplomats in Moscow.

Russia illegally annexed the four regions in 2022, despite not having full control over any of them.

The regional capitals of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are still in Ukrainian hands — meaning Putin is demanding Ukraine cede swathes of territory under its control as a precondition for negotiations.

"As soon as Kiev says it is ready to do this and begins really withdrawing troops and officially renounces plans to join NATO, we will immediately, literally that very minute, ceasefire and begin talks," Putin said.

Russia was seeking "Ukraine's neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear status, its demilitarisation and de-Nazification," he added.

Kiev immediately rejected the demands.

"These messages are messages of ultimatum... it's the same thing Hitler did," Zelenskyy told Italy's Sky TG24 TV channel on the sidelines of the G7 summit.

"Nazism has already arrived, and now it has Putin's face," he added.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said the "absurd" demands showed Russia wanted "the occupation of Ukraine, the destruction of the Ukrainian people".

700,000 Russians fighting in Ukraine

Putin also claimed that almost 700,000 Russians are fighting in Ukraine.

"In the zone of our special military operation there are almost 700,000," Putin said.

In December, at his end-of-year press conference, Putin gave the figure of 617,000 taking part in combat operations.

He said that of those, 244,000 had been mobilised.

The latest figure on troop numbers comes after Russia in May launched a major ground assault in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region.

Russia has a manpower advantage over Ukraine on the battlefield.

Zelenskyy has acknowledged issues with staffing and "morale" within Ukraine's often outgunned and outnumbered ranks.

Kiev has lowered the age at which men can be drafted and tightened punishments for those who avoid the call-up.

"We need to staff the reserves... A large number of [brigades] are empty," Zelenskyy told the AFP news agency in May.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said Russian forces were concentrating their firepower on the Pokrovsk front in the eastern Donetsk region, where overnight strikes wounded at least six civilians.

"The enemy is intensively attacking Ukrainian defenders in the Pokrovsk sector," the Ukrainian military said in its evening briefing.

"The situation is difficult, but controlled by the Defence Forces. Our soldiers are making efforts to prevent the enemy from advancing deep into Ukrainian territory."

Separately, in a final communique of their summit in Italy released on Friday, G7 leaders affirmed their decision to make available around $50 billion to Ukraine by leveraging "the extraordinary revenues" of frozen Russian assets.