Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia. Photo / AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia. Photo / AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin has laid out his demands to end the ongoing violence in Ukraine, including Ukrainian "neutrality" and disarmament.
Putin rang Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan early Friday (NZT) and outlined what it would take for him to pull Russia's troops from Ukraine.
Erdogan's leading adviser, Ibrahim Kalin, listened in on the call and told the BBC that Putin's demands fell into two categories.
The first four demands were "not too difficult" for Ukraine to meet, he said, and involve an acceptance that Ukraine should be neutral and not join Nato.
Other demands in this category include Ukraine having to undergo a disarmament process to ensure the country isn't a threat to Russia in the future and the Russian language would have to have legal protections in the country.
Kalin told the BBC that Putin also wanted Ukraine to undergo what he described as "de-nazification", though it is unclear exactly what that entails.
The more difficult demands apparently lie in the second category, with Putin demanding face-to-face negotiations with President Volodymyr Zelensky before a peacekeeping agreement can be decided upon.
Kalin said there were other conditions that could prove contentious, including the status of Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, with the assumption being that Russia would demand the Ukrainian government give up that territory.
Russia will also likely demand Ukraine formally accept that Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, belongs to Russia.
Putin's list of demands come amid official reports that morale among Russian troops is waning, with the bid to capture Kyiv taking much longer than initially expected.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Russia. Photo / AP
Putin's soldiers desperate to go home
Unearthed audio reveals that some Russian troops in Ukraine are so desperate to go home that they are looking for Ukrainian ammunition so they can shoot themselves in the leg and be sent home.
In an intercepted phone call, a Russian soldier in Ukraine told his mother his unit "want to find some 7.62 bullets, the Ukrainian ones" to hurt themselves with.
The soldier reportedly tells her that some soldiers have "already done this".
Speaking "in secret", he said his unit is full of soldiers ready to "shoot each other's legs so they would put some bandages on and send us to the hospital in Budennovsk", a town in southern Russia.
The audio file was published by the Ukrainian Security Service and claims that as many as 120 people have been "sent back to the hospital with wounds" and that "350" have been sent back to Russia in coffins.
The soldier, who has not been identified, tells his mother his unit is no longer equipped for combat because "Ukrainians blew all of it up".
"If they attack us now, we are dead," he tells his mum over the phone.
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows burning buildings in a residential area in northeast Chernihiv, Ukraine on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Photo / AP
According to numbers released by the Pentagon, it is estimated that as many as 7000 Russian troops have died since the war began in Ukraine, while 14,000 to 21,000 have been wounded since the start of the invasion 21 days ago.
During the intercepted phone call, the soldier's mother can be heard pleading with him to ask to be sent home.
"Tell them that you are ... that I'm left alone and I need your help so they would send you back," she says.
According to the Daily Mail, the soldier then responds that he would never be allowed to return and adds that "people who refused to serve already got eight years of prison".
