Russian police & National Guard to stay in Ukraine’s Donbas: Kremlin

Kyiv: A senior Kremlin official says that the Russian police and National Guard will remain in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas to oversee the prized industrial region, even if a peace settlement ends the nearly four-year war — a possibility that is likely to be rejected by Ukrainian officials as US-led negotiations drag on.

Moscow will give its blessing to a ceasefire only after Ukraine’s forces have withdrawn from the front line, Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said in comments published Friday in Russian business daily Kommersant.

Ushakov told Kommersant “it’s entirely possible that there won’t be any troops (in the Donbas), either Russian or Ukrainian” in a postwar scenario.

But he said that “there will be the National Guard, our police, everything necessary to maintain order and organise life.”

For months, American negotiators have tried to navigate the demands of each side as US President Donald Trump presses for a swift end to Russia’s war and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has run into a major obstacle over who keeps Ukrainian territory that Russian forces have occupied so far.

Since Moscow’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and the seizure of territory in the east by Russia-backed separatists later that

year, as well as land taken after the full-blown invasion was launched on February 24, 2022, Russia has captured about 20 per cent of its neighbour.

Ukraine says its constitution doesn’t allow it to surrender land. Russia, which illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions illegally in 2022, says the same.

Ushakov said that “no matter what the outcome (of peace talks), this territory (the Donbas) is Russian Federation territory.”

On Thursday, Trump compared the negotiations to a very complex real estate deal. He said that he wants to see more progress in talks before sending envoys to possible meetings with European leaders over the weekend.

In October Trump said the Donbas region will have to be “cut up” to end the war.

In recent months, Russia’s army has made a determined push to gain control of all parts of Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk, which together make up the valuable Donbas region.

Its slow slog across the Ukrainian countryside, using its significant advantage in troop numbers in a corrosive war of attrition, has been costly in terms of casualties and losses of armour.

Although outnumbered, Ukrainian defenders have held firm in many areas and counterattacked in others.

Ukrainian forces said Friday that they had recaptured several settlements and neighbourhoods near the city of Kupiansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region, following a monthslong

operation aimed at reversing Russian advances.

Kupiansk has in recent months been one of the most closely contested sectors of the around 1,000-kilometre front line.

Ukrainian units gradually cut off Russian supply routes into Kupiansk starting on September 22, and regained control of the villages of Kindrashivka and Radkivka, as well as several northern districts of the city, according to a statement by the National Guard’s Khartia Corps posted on Facebook.

Fighting is ongoing in central Kupiansk now, where more than 200

Russian soldiers are encircled, the statement said.

Russian officials made no immediate comment, and the Ukrainians statements couldn’t be independently verified.

At the end of October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukrainian troops in Kupiansk were surrounded and offered to negotiate their surrender.

He said that a media visit to the area would prove it.

Ukraine also has developed its long-range strike capabilities using domestically produced weapons to disrupt Russia’s war machine.