Putin considers agreeing to freeze the front line in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions as a concession

Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering as a concession his willingness to freeze the front line in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, dropping his earlier demand for the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the entire territory of those regions.

However, he is not abandoning his other demands.

This was reported by Reuters, citing sources close to the Kremlin.

According to them, Putin initially insisted on full control of all four annexed regions, as well as the transfer to Russia of parts of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Currently, about 73% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions are under Russian occupation.

At the same time, he continues to demand control over the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Moscow’s political conditions also remain unchanged: Ukraine must renounce joining NATO, NATO must halt its eastward expansion, limits must be imposed on the Ukrainian army, and the deployment of Western troops on Ukrainian territory must be prohibited.

It should be recalled that Zelensky has already opposed most of these conditions. He explicitly rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s idea of a “territorial swap.”