MOSCOW (Reuters) -- The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the Ukraine war would continue until the goals set by President Vladimir Putin were achieved by military action or by negotiation.
Putin has demanded that Ukraine abandon its ambition to join NATO and withdraw fully from four regions of the country that Russia has claimed as its own - terms Kyiv has rejected as tantamount to surrender.
“The special military operation will end when all the objectives set by the president and commander-in-chief have been achieved,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, using Moscow’s term for the conflict.
“These goals can be achieved as a result of the special military operation or a result of relevant negotiations.”
Peskov said no talks between Moscow and Kyiv were currently under way because “the Ukrainian side refuses any negotiations”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday made the case for a diplomatic settlement to the war and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in Ukraine until it could join NATO.
Putin’s foreign intelligence chief said Russia was close to achieving its goals in Ukraine with Moscow holding what he said was the strategic initiative in all areas in the war.
“The situation on the front is not in Kyiv’s favor,” Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Razvedchik, the official publication of the foreign intelligence agency.
“The strategic initiative in all areas belongs to us, we are close to achieving our goals, while the armed forces of Ukraine are on the verge of collapse,” Naryshkin said.
Naryshkin added that for Russia, Zelensky had lost legitimacy and “the ability to negotiate”.
Naryshkin, who heads the main successor organization to the Soviet-era KGB’s First Chief Directorate, is one of the few senior Russian officials to have relatively regular contacts with senior U.S. and Western officials.
His views give an insight into thinking at the top levels of the Kremlin - which views the West’s support for Ukraine as evidence that the United States is fighting a proxy war against Russia aimed at toppling Moscow’s rulers.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness” of war.
Trump, who has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, is returning to the White House at a time of Russian ascendancy. Moscow controls a chunk of Ukraine about the size of the American state of Virginia and is advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.