The Daily Populous Friday December 5th, 2025 day edition
Authored by english.aawsat.com and submitted by seeebiscuit

President Vladimir Putin said in an interview published on Thursday that Russia would take full control of Ukraine's Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw, something Kyiv has flatly rejected.

Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops in the Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, said Reuters.

"Either we liberate these territories by force of arms, or Ukrainian troops leave these territories," Putin told India Today ahead of a visit to New Delhi, according to a clip shown on Russian state television.

Ukraine says it does not want to gift Russia its own territory that Moscow has failed to win on the battlefield, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Moscow should not be rewarded for a war it started.

Russia currently controls 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, all of Luhansk, more than 80% of Donetsk, about 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

About 5,000 square km (1,900 square miles) of Donetsk remains under Ukrainian control.

In discussions with the United States over the outline of a possible peace deal to end the war, Russia has repeatedly said that it wants control over the whole of Donbas - and that the United States should informally recognize Moscow's control.

Russia in 2022 declared that the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were now part of Russia after referenda that the West and Kyiv dismissed as a sham. Most countries recognize the regions - and Crimea - as part of Ukraine.

Putin received US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in the Kremlin on Tuesday, and said that Russia had accepted some US proposals on Ukraine, and that talks should continue.

Russia's RIA state news agency cited Putin as saying that his meeting with Witkoff and Kushner had been "very useful" and that it had been based on proposals he and President Donald Trump had discussed in Alaska in August.

MasterStrength8493 on December 4th, 2025 at 22:03 UTC »

One guy said that he will end the Russia-Ukraine war within 3 days when he becomes president. Well, how did that turn out? This whole thing is just a circus at this point......

Edit: The delusional president actually said that he would end the war within 24 hours 😂

Edit 2 for those who want to know when and how many times he said it: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/25/politics/fact-check-trump-ukraine-war

DET_SWAT on December 4th, 2025 at 21:45 UTC »

Imagine you claim that you have the world’s strongest military, but struggle to invade you neighbor country after 3 years. That embarrassing.

Miserable_Pie_8337 on December 4th, 2025 at 21:38 UTC »

Fuck Putin.