Russia increasingly belligerent as truce talks flounder, Ukraine war rages 

Russia this week rejected the latest United States peace proposal for Ukraine and declared victory in battles over key Ukrainian cities – claims Ukraine has dismissed as propaganda.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Monday night said it had seized the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk it has been besieging for a year. Defence Minister Andrei Belousov later repeated the claim personally.

Russia also said it had pushed Ukrainian defenders out of Vovchansk and Kupiansk, cities in the northern Kharkiv region.

“Most of the city of Kupiansk is under the control of Ukrainian troops,” said Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, a command structure responsible for the defence of Kharkiv, rebutting Russia’s claim.

The reported Russian advances came on the eve of US envoy Steve Witkoff’s arrival in Moscow for peace talks with Yury Ushakov, a key aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the timing of the claims was designed to make an impression on the US delegation.

“The brazen statements of the leadership of the aggressor country about the ‘seizure’ of these settlements by the Russian army are not valid,” the General Staff said, decrying them as “propaganda” to influence participants of “international negotiations”.

The General Staff said its forces were still fighting in Pokrovsk, Vovchansk and Kupiansk.

In Pokrovsk, “the Defence Forces hold the northern part of the city along the railway line,” it said.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii went further, saying Ukraine had blocked Russian infiltration into Kupiansk, and was “working on gradually pushing the enemy out of their bridgehead north of the city”.

But as Ukraine’s military commanders denied claims of further losses, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government was rocked again by the latest dismissal of a high-profile political figure over corruption allegations. Observers have debated how the sacking of Zelenskyy’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermak, a week ago, could affect Kyiv’s standing in peace talks.

The documents Witkoff took to Moscow were the result of intense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in Florida on Sunday and Monday.

Those talks followed a first round of US-Ukrainian talks in Geneva a week earlier on the basis of a 28-point peace plan presented by Washington.

Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have said that the original plan was the outcome of talks between US President Donald Trump and Putin at a summit in Alaska last August. The forum was considered controversial since it left out Ukraine and its European allies.

Putin’s aide Ushakov told journalists the US-Ukrainian talks had reduced the points to 20, and broken up the list into four separate documents, but that Russia had agreed to nothing.

“We didn’t discuss specific wording or specific American proposals,” Ushakov said about his five-hour meeting with Witkoff. “We specifically discussed territorial issues … we also discussed the enormous prospects for future economic cooperation between the two countries,” he said, referring to the US and Russia.

Russia has occupied just under a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, about a third less than it held in 2022 when it launched the full-scale invasion. Although Moscow’s forces have conquered less than 2 percent of Ukraine in the past two years at an estimated cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties, Putin appears to believe time is on his side.

The conquest of Pokrovsk, Putin told journalists on Tuesday, was “a good base for achieving all the objectives set at the beginning of the special military operation”, suggesting Russia’s war goals remained unchanged.

He threatened to “cut Ukraine off from the sea,” a clear reference to Odesa and Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s only remaining littoral territory, the seizure of which appears to have been part of the original Russian invasion plan.

Asked about peace last week, Putin told journalists, “We still have proposals coming in about ceasing hostilities. When the Ukrainian troops leave the areas they are now occupying, then the hostilities will cease. And if they don’t, we will make them leave using our firepower.”

Putin also threatened Europe, playing into fears of a broadened war.

“We have no intention of going to war with Europe,” he said. “But if Europe suddenly wants to fight us and does, we’re ready right now.”

He suggested the Russian military was pacing itself in Ukraine to give peace talks a chance.

“We’re dealing with Ukraine surgically, carefully. Understandable, right?” Putin said. “This isn’t war in the literal, modern sense of the word.”

At the 22nd annual Valdai Discussion Club, an annual academic conference in Moscow, Putin said the war in Ukraine had effectively created a multipolar world he described as “a much more open, one might even say creative, space for foreign policy behaviour. Virtually nothing is predetermined; everything can unfold in any direction.”

Despite claims of seeking peace, Putin has not eased the campaign against Ukraine.

During the week from November 27 until December 3, Russian forces launched just under 1,100 drones and 39 missiles. Ukraine said it intercepted 1,000 drones and half the missiles.

At least four people were killed in Dnipro on Monday, while 40 were injured.

Throughout November, Ukraine’s cities and energy infrastructure were on the receiving end of 119 missiles and just under 3,000 long-range Shahed drones, the Ukrainian Air Force said.

Ukraine has retaliated against Russian energy infrastructure.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, hailed attacks on the Saratov refinery and the Engels airbase on November 28. He also said Ukraine struck the Alabuga drone-manufacturing factory.

On Saturday, Kovalenko said Ukraine had used surface drones to destroy three Russian oil offloading docks at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s General Staff said it struck “several” oil storage tanks in the Tambov region used by the Russian army.

In addition to direct strikes to choke off fuel supplies to Russia’s army, Ukraine has supported stiffer energy sanctions to choke off Russia’s cash flow.

Zelenskyy’s adviser for sanctions policy, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, said Russian crude oil production was expected to decrease by 5 percent by the end of the year, and that exports had fallen by 15 to 20 percent.