MORE: ISW continues to assess that Putin, in part, launched his full-scale invasion in order to destroy NATO and seize control of all of Ukraine, and Putin’s original war demands notably include not only demands of Ukraine but of NATO and the West as well.

Putin is attempting to falsely frame his war aims as solely geographically limited to Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Putin falsely claimed that Russia “had no choice” but to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), that he offered Ukraine to withdraw its forces from all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to avoid hostilities in 2022, and that Ukraine subsequently refused. Putin claimed that Russia will now either seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts through military means or Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the areas of the two oblasts that Ukraine still controls. Putin’s focus during the December 4 interview on Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts ignores the way that his full-scale invasion initially sought to capture far more territory than just those two regions, including Kyiv City, and to fully control Ukraine through a Kremlin-installed government. Russia had to rescope its strategy after its failure to take Kyiv City to focus instead on more limited operations in eastern Ukraine.

Putin also attempted to obfuscate his rejection of the latest US peace proposal in the December 4 interview. Putin discussed the December 2 meeting with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and former Senior Advisor to the US President Jared Kushner, claiming that the peace proposals from the US delegation were “in one way or another” based on the agreements from Putin’s previous meeting with US President Donald Trump in Alaska. Putin stated that there were points in the US-proposal to which Russia could not agree, but that he would not offer more specifics so as to not “disrupt” Trump’s peace process. ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin is purposely refraining from publicly discussing the December 2 meeting in order to obfuscate Russia’s rejection of the US-Ukrainian peace proposal that did not concede to all of Russia’s absolutist war demands.

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