Russia might try to take Ukrainian city of Sumy, Putin says

The Sumy region is not one of the regions Moscow has formally annexed (Florent VERGNES) (Florent VERGNES/AFP/AFP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he did not “rule out” his forces attempting to seize the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, casting fresh doubt over the prospect of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv.

Ukraine said Putin’s comments showed “disdain” for the peace process.

Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year conflict have stalled in recent weeks and Kyiv has accused Moscow of deliberately sabotaging a peace deal to prolong its full-scale offensive on the country.

Russia currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine and has claimed four Ukrainian regions as its own since launching its assault in 2022, in addition to Crimea, which it captured in 2014.

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The Sumy region is not one of the regions Moscow has formally annexed, although Russian forces have recently made inroads there for the first time in three years.

At Russia’s flagship economic forum in Saint Petersburg, Putin suggested Moscow could take Sumy as part of the creation of a “buffer zone” along the border and repeated his denial of Ukrainian statehood.

“We have no objective to take Sumy, but in principle I do not rule it out… They pose a constant threat to us, constantly shelling the border areas,” Putin said.

“I consider Russians and Ukrainians to be one people. In that sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” he told attendees, when asked why his army was entering areas Moscow did not claim as its own.

“There is a saying: wherever a Russian soldier sets foot, that is ours.”

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga described Putin’s comments as “deranged” and called for Kyiv’s allies to slap “devastating sanctions” on Russia.

“The only way to force Russia into peace is to deprive it of its sense of impunity,” he wrote in a post on X.

– ‘They are creating problems’ –

Putin’s widening territorial ambitions are likely to roil Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has accused Moscow of not wanting to end the fighting.

The two sides held rounds of direct talks in Istanbul in May and in June, but Kyiv accused Moscow of sending “dummy” negotiators with no real power to enact a peace deal.

Putin has declined to take part in the peace talks in person and on Thursday said he would only meet Zelensky during a “final phase” of negotiations on ending the three-year conflict.

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He has also insisted Ukraine give up territory it already controls for peace.

Kyiv says it cannot and will not accept Russian occupation of any part of its land.

In his address Friday, Putin denied he was calling for Ukraine to “capitulate”.

“We are not seeking Ukraine’s surrender. We insist on recognition of the realities that have developed on the ground,” the Russian leader said.

Putin repeated that Moscow was “advancing on all fronts” and that his troops had penetrated up to 12 kilometres (seven miles) into the Sumy region.

He also accused Kyiv of “stupidity” by launching an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last August.

“They are creating problems for themselves,” he said.

Russia has for months been rejecting calls for an unconditional ceasefire, launching deadly attacks on its neighbour.

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Ukraine slams Putin’s ‘disdain’ for peace process after he says ‘whole of Ukraine’ belongs to Russia

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga on Friday said that Vladimir Putin had shown “disdain” for the peace process between the two countries after the Russian president earlier said that the “whole of Ukraine” belonged to Russia.

Ukraine said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had shown “disdain” for the peace process by suggesting Moscow might seize more Ukrainian territory, including the northeastern city of Sumy.

“Putin’s cynical statements demonstrate complete disdain for US peace efforts … The only way to force Russia into peace is to deprive it of its sense of impunity,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said in a post on X.

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Putin on Friday told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that Russians and Ukrainians were one people, “and in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours”.

He cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border.

Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, also said he was not seeking the capitulation of Ukraine or denying Ukraine’s sovereignty, but that Ukraine had to be neutral.

He has also said that Putin’s terms for peace are akin to capitulation.

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“We have a saying, or a parable,” Putin said. “Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours.”

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AFP)

Read more on FRANCE 24 English

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that in his view the whole of Ukraine was “ours” and cautioned that advancing Russian forces could take the Ukrainian city of Sumy as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border.

Ukraine’s foreign minister denounced the statements as evidence of Russian “disdain” for U.S. peace efforts and said Moscow was bent on seizing more territory and killing more Ukrainians.

Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, more than 99% of the Luhansk region, over 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russians and Ukrainians were one people, “and in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours,” and said he did not rule out Russia taking control of the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

But Mr Putin, speaking at an international economic forum in St Petersburg, said Russia had never doubted Ukraine’s right to sovereignty, but noted that when Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 it was as a “neutral state”.

Mr Putin, who says Russia is fighting in Ukraine to protect its own security, was answering a question about Russia’s war aims.

“We have a saying, or a parable,” Mr Putin said.

“Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours.”

Kyiv and its Western allies have rejected Moscow’s claims to four Ukrainian regions and Crimea as illegal, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly rejected the notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

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Mr Putin said Russian forces were carving out a buffer zone in Ukraine’s Sumy region in order to protect Russian territory and said he did not rule out those same troops taking control of the regional capital of Sumy.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

On Friday, June 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin intensified his rhetoric about the war in Ukraine, saying all of Ukraine belongs to Russia. In response, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the statement is meant to “divert public attention away from the complete failure of [Putin’s] quarter-century rule.”

‘All of Ukraine is ours’

During his address to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Putin said that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” adding, “In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours.” He went on to say that Ukraine is free to assert its independence and sovereignty; however, according to terms agreed upon during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, so too did Ukraine assert its neutrality –– a stance the Russian president accuses Kyiv of abandoning.

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Since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has occupied four of the nation’s territories, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. In 2014, Moscow annexed another autonomous region, Crimea.

On Friday, Putin said, “Where the foot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours,” suggesting his government has no intention of returning occupied territories to Ukraine if, and when, the current fighting concludes.

Zelenskyy calls Putin’s peace talk ‘cynical’

Even before his most recent remarks, Sybiha and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have repeatedly called Putin’s words and actions “cynical,” saying they reflect an unwillingness and lack of seriousness on the part of Moscow to bring the three-year war to an end –– despite ongoing efforts from the U.S.

To further illustrate his point, Zelenskyy said Saturday, June 21, that during recent exchanges of dead soldiers, Kyiv received at least 20 bodies of Russian nationals.

“They threw the corpses of their citizens at us. This is their attitude toward war, toward their soldiers. And this is already documented,” Zelenskyy said. “Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports.” Journalists were shown the passport and ID of one of the dead soldiers, which suggested he came from the Moscow region.

Zelenskyy maintains that Putin is not interested in a ceasefire or peace negotiations, and is simply “putting on a performance” to avoid stronger Western sanctions. “Yesterday, everyone heard the signals from Russia’s leader,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media on Saturday. “Putin put on a performance, particularly for the United States too. He wants all of Ukraine, and had wanted it not just for four years, not since 2014, but long before that.”

Russian offensives continue from Kharkiv to Sumy

Putin’s increased rhetoric occurred on the same day that Russian drones hit two significant Ukrainian cities, Odesa and Kharkiv, killing at least one person and injuring almost two dozen others, including two girls aged 17 and 12.

The Russian military is also continuing to launch an incursion into the Ukrainian border city of Sumy, saying it wants to establish a buffer zone. However, Putin has also said he could take Sumy if he wanted to.

“We have no objective to take Sumy but, in principle, I do not rule it out,” Putin said Friday.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a date for a new round of peace negotiations should be decided upon next week, following a failed round of talks in early June.

Similarly, Ukraine has been largely left out of an upcoming NATO summit, which one analyst called a “nothingburger.”

“The summit itself is a bit of a nothingburger,” said Jan Techau, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “They’ve gotten everything out, including the Russia strategy that was supposed to be written. That was to keep the peace. Ukraine is almost completely out of this summit now.”