Russia renews hardline demands for ending Ukraine war

Russia on Wednesday renewed its hardline demands for ending the Ukraine war, ruling out a ceasefire or comprehensive negotiations with Ukraine unless it withdrew from the eastern Donbas region.

The comments come less than a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the more than four-year conflict was "heading to an end", without elaborating.

"In order for there to be a ceasefire and a window for full-scale peace talks to open... President Zelensky must give the order for Ukraine's army to cease fire and to leave the territory of the Donbas, to leave the Russian regions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, including AFP, during a conference call.

Russia currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine: the entirety of the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk -- collectively referred to as the Donbas -- and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

It claims all five regions as its own, following hastily-organised referendums widely seen by the international community as illegitimate.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected Russia's demands, saying ceding to them would be tantamount to surrender.

Spurred by Russia's full-scale offensive in 2022, the Ukraine conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and spiralled into Europe's deadliest since World War II.

US-led talks on ending the fighting have shown little progress since February, when Washington shifted focus to its war with Iran.