If Ukraine wants peace, Putin believes it must stay neutral.

In order for peace to be possible, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine should maintain its neutrality and that the borders of Ukraine should reflect the desires of the people residing in the land that is claimed by Russia. "One cannot conceive of good-neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine if there is no neutrality," Putin stated. 

According to Putin, Russia had acknowledged the borders of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union in the expectation that the country would remain neutral. On multiple occasions, the US-led NATO military alliance has stated that Ukraine will eventually become a member. It would be "constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation" if Ukraine did not maintain its neutrality, according to Putin.

The war in Ukraine has lasted for over 2.5 years, and now Russia controls about 20% of the country. On June 14, Putin laid out his conditions for a ceasefire: Ukraine must abandon its aspirations to join NATO and remove all of its forces from the areas occupied by Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky has offered a "victory plan" and asked for more Western backing, but Ukraine rejects those conditions as being the same as surrender. “We are determined to create conditions for a long-term settlement so that Ukraine is an independent, sovereign state, and not an instrument in the hands of third countries, and not used in their interests,” Putin added.

The frontiers of Ukraine should be in line with the sovereign decisions of people who live in particular territories, which we call our historical territories. That's what Putin stated when asked about Ukraine's future borders. Despite US generals stating that such an objective would need enormous resources that Ukraine presently lacks, Ukraine maintains that it will not rest until every single Russian soldier is expelled from its land.