Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear in a telephone call with US President Donald Trump that Moscow will not back down from its goal of eliminating the “root” of the Ukraine war. According to a report by Al Jazeera, the statement came after the US temporarily halted arms supplies to Kiev.

Senior Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said Putin made it clear that Russia wants to achieve its strategic objectives in Ukraine, in particular eliminating the factors that led to the conflict. These include Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO, which Russia tried to prevent by launching a massive military attack on Ukraine in 2022. However, Putin also said that he is ready to find a political and diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Meanwhile, Leonid Pasechnik, governor of the Russia-backed Luhansk region, claimed that the Luhansk region is now fully under Russian control – the first of four Ukrainian regions that Russia has fully taken over. However, reactions to this claim have varied.

On 21 June, Putin said at a public event that Russia was not demanding an unconditional surrender from Ukraine, but wanted Ukraine to accept the “realities on the ground” that had now become reality. He also reiterated that he considered Russians and Ukrainians to be part of the same nation, and in this context said that “all of Ukraine is ours”, although he also added that Russia had never formally denied Ukraine’s right to independence.