MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence chief said on Tuesday that Russia was close to achieving its goals in Ukraine with Moscow holding what he said was the strategic initiative in all areas in the war.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
“The situation on the front is not in Kyiv’s favour,” Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Razvedchik, the official publication of the foreign intelligence agency.
“The strategic initiative in all areas belongs to us, we are close to achieving our goals, while the armed forces of Ukraine are on the verge of collapse,” Naryshkin said.
Naryshkin added that for Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had lost legitimacy and “the ability to negotiate”.
Naryshkin, who heads the main successor organisation to the Soviet-era KGB’s First Chief Directorate, is one of the few senior Russian officials to have relatively regular contacts with senior U.S. and Western officials.
His views give an insight into thinking at the top levels of the Kremlin – which views the West’s support for Ukraine as evidence that the United States is fighting a proxy war against Russia aimed at toppling Moscow’s rulers.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness” of war.
Zelenskiy on Monday made the case for a diplomatic settlement to the war and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in Ukraine until it could join the NATO military alliance.
Trump, who has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, is returning to the White House at a time of Russian ascendancy. Moscow controls a chunk of Ukraine about the size of the American state of Virginia and is advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.
Open source maps showed Russian forces pushing along the front, with fierce fighting in the towns of Kurakhove and Toretsk in Ukraine’s east.
Reuters reported last month that Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
Putin has said Russia should be left fully in control of four Ukrainian regions his troops partially control at the moment for a peace deal to be done.
The West and Ukraine say the war is an brutal imperial-style land grab by Moscow – and have cautioned that if Putin wins, then the enemies of the West across the world will be emboldened.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Ros Russell)