Vladimir Putin has spelt out for the first time how far Moscow wants to push into Ukrainian territory along the shared frontier, and he has made clear that this strip of land is not up for discussion. Appearing in combat uniform at a military command post on Friday, the Russian president told his generals that the buffer area his troops are carving out will stay out of any future peace talks with Kyiv.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the planned zone stretches for 660 kilometres along the border. Roughly 70 percent of that length, about 465 kilometres, is already held by Russian forces, he said. How deep the belt is meant to reach into Ukraine was left open.
Putin framed the project as a direct answer to Ukraine’s surprise push into the Russian region of Kursk in 2024 and 2025. His stated aim is “absolute security” for Russia’s border districts. In practice, the plan means grabbing parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, areas Moscow had not previously claimed as its own.
The timing is pointed. Diplomacy around the war is in turmoil after a US deal to buy Russian diesel, which pleased Donald Trump but deepened the rift between Washington and Kyiv. In Brussels, where EU leaders hosted him on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Moscow’s talk of negotiations as a “parody” and asked the Europeans for an extra 70 billion euros next year to keep Ukraine’s defence going.
Putin also claimed his army still needs to take only a little over a tenth of the Donetsk region and about 16.5 percent of Zaporizhzhia. On the ground, the fighting showed no sign of easing: Ukrainian officials reported at least eight people killed in Russian strikes on Friday, with power cut for more than a million people.
