Russian leader Vladimir Putin did not change his rhetoric regarding the war in Ukraine following his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday
That is according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Ukrinform reports.
Putin emphasized the alleged “importance of solving the ‘root causes’ of the war in Ukraine,” which the Kremlin has defined as NATO’s eastward expansion and Ukraine’s alleged discrimination against Russian-speakers. Putin also accused European states of attempting to undermine the negotiation process.
ISW notes that these statements are two standard narrative lines that the Kremlin employs in order to justify its illegal invasion of Ukraine and to drive a wedge between the United States, Europe, and Ukraine.
“Putin said nothing in the joint press conference to indicate that he has moderated either his war aims or his willingness to compromise on them and reiterated language he has used since 2021 to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” the report states.
Analysts stressed that Putin once again “demonstrated that he has not changed his views on Ukrainian sovereignty since 2021 and remains disinterested in serious peace negotiations with Ukraine.”
“Putin used the joint press conference following the August 15 Alaska summit to evoke the Kremlin’s long-standing narrative that Russia and Ukraine share the “same roots” and that Russia considers Ukraine to be a ‘brotherly’ nation,” ISW analysts said.
The report references Putin’s 2021 essay on the “Historic Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” in which he similarly ideologized that Ukrainians and Belarusians have always belonged to the Russian nation because of their shared “historical and spiritual space.”
ISW previously assessed that the essay, which Putin published less than a month after meeting with then-U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva in June 2021, was an ultimatum to Kyiv as it openly questioned Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Putin stated in the essay that Ukraine was a “product of the Soviet era shaped on the lands of historical Russia,” and reiterated these arguments in his February 2022 declaration of war against Ukraine as a justification for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The continuity between Putin’s statements at the August 15 press conference with Trump and his previous statements demonstrates that he remains committed to the view that Ukraine’s existence as a state and territorial integrity depend on Ukraine’s alignment with Russia,” ISW said.
The report also states that Russia conducted drone and missile strikes in Ukraine in the hours before the August 15 Alaska summit, causing civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure.
Photo: The White House, X
