He Kremlin today showed itself willing to accept a withdrawal of Russian and Ukrainian troops from the entire Donbaswhere security would correspond to the forces of the Russian National Guard.
“It is very possible that there will not be any troops there, neither Russian nor Ukrainian. Yes, but there will be the National Guard, our police, everything necessary to guarantee public order,” said Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s international policy advisor, in statements to the newspaper Kommersant during a visit to Turkmenistan.
Around the World Newsletter
However, he stressed that “there will only be a ceasefire after the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops.”
YOU CAN SEE: How Chernobyl’s protective shield designed for 100 years no longer guarantees full radiation safety
“And what will be there later, about that, from my point of view, we can talk,” he said.
The demilitarization of Donbas is one of the options that the United States is considering in order to convince kyiv to give up the 20% it still controls in the Donetsk region.
In turn, regarding the proposal of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyto call a referendum on the future of Donbas, Ushakov assured that “Donbas is Russian”, which was reflected in the Russian Constitution in 2022 after the annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
“By the way, my congratulations. Today is Russian Constitution Day,” he added proudly.
He stressed that “sooner or later, if not through negotiations, then through military means, that territory (Donbas) will pass fully under the control of the Russian Federation. Only everything else will depend on that.”
Earlier, Ushakov expressed suspicions that Zelensky has only agreed to call presidential elections, in line with what Russia and the US are demanding, to achieve a ceasefire.
“It cannot be ruled out that he sees it as a possibility of simply achieving a ceasefire. That’s all,” he told RT.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Ashgabat Congress Center, Turkmenistan, on December 12, 2025. Photo: EFE/EPA/ALEXANDER KAZAKOV / SPUTNIK / KREMLIN
The Kremlin already rejected this week a possible energy truce as a condition for holding elections in Ukraine before the war ends.
“We work for peace, not for a truce,” said Dmitri Peskov, presidential spokesman. Russia refuses to declare a ceasefire, arguing that this would only serve to give the Ukrainian army breathing space to rearm and reinforce its positions.
At the end of November the Russian leader, Vladimir Putininsisted that “it is practically impossible, impossible from a legal point of view”, to reach an agreement with Ukraine, since, he recalled, Zelensky lost his “legitimacy” by not calling elections when his mandate expired in May 2024, something that – he argued – Russia did do.
Zelensky expressed his willingness this week to introduce reforms to Ukrainian legislation to be able to call elections before the war ends, but asked for security guarantees from the United States and its European allies.
In turn, the day before he acknowledged that the only way for Russia to accept the ceasefire is for the framework peace agreement promoted by the United States to be signed.
Ushakov also stressed today that Moscow has not yet received the version of the American peace plan modified by the Europeans, although he anticipated that “there will be a lot that we may not like.”
“We have not yet seen the documents (…), but these contributions will hardly be of a positive nature,” he said.
