Russia will not "back down" from goals in Ukraine, Putin tells Trump

Washington DC [US], July 4 (ANI): Russia President Vladimir Putin on Thursday held a telephonic conversation with US President Donald Trump in which he made it clear that the Moscow will "not back down" on its goal of "eliminating" the root cause of the war in Ukraine, Al Jazeera reported
"Russia will not back down," Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after Putin's call with Trump. However, he added that Putin expressed "readiness" to "seek a political and negotiated solution to the conflict."
Putin emphasised that Russia seeks to achieve its goals in Ukraine and remove the "root causes" of the conflict, Ushakov said.
The "root cause" here refers to Ukraine's push to join NATO, following which Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to prevent Kyiv from joining the US-centric alliance.
The phone call came a day after the US paused promised weapon deliveries to Kyiv, including air defence missiles and precision-guided artillery, Al Jazeera in its report added.
Meanwhile Russian occupation governor of Ukraine's eastern Luhansk region claimed it had been entirely conquered, making it the first of the four eastern Ukrainian regions Russia has annexed that it fully controls, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday.
"Just a couple of days ago, I received a report that the territory of the Luhansk People's Republic has been 100 per cent liberated," Leonid Pasechnik said, although not everyone agreed.
On June 21, Putin said that Moscow is not seeking Ukraine's unconditional surrender, but instead demands recognition of the "realities" on the ground, RT reported.
Speaking during a plenary session at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Putin was asked if Russia was pursuing the kind of unconditional surrender from Ukraine that US President Donald Trump is demanding from Iran.
"We are not seeking the surrender of Ukraine. We insist on recognition of the realities that have developed on the ground," Putin stated, emphasising that the Ukraine conflict is "completely different" from the situation in the Middle East, according to RT.
He also reiterated his long-held belief that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people." "I have said many times that I consider Russians and Ukrainians to be one people, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours," he said, while also asserting that Moscow has never denied Ukraine's right to be an independent country. (ANI)