By Darya Korsunskaya, Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan
Moscow (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin is probably not bending for sanctions that Ultimatum expires this Friday from US President Donald Trump and retains the goal of conquering four regions of Ukraine in their entirety, sources near the Kremlin against Reuters.
Trump has threatened to hit Russia with new sanctions and to impose 100% rates on countries that buy the oil – of which the largest China and India are – unless Putin agrees with a ceasefiring – the fire in the Russian war in Ukraine.
The determination of Putin to continue is inspired by his conviction that Russia wins and by SCEPSIS that even more American sanctions will have a great impact after successive waves of economic fines for 3-1/2 years of war, according to three sources that are familiar with discussions in the Kremlin.
The Russian leader does not want to make Trump angry, and he realizes that he can reject a chance to improve relations with Washington and the West, but his war goals have priority, according to two of the sources.
The aim of Putin is to fully catch the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, who claimed Russia as it itself, and then to talk about a peace agreement, according to one of the sources.
“If Putin was able to fully occupy those four regions that he claimed for Russia, he could claim that his war in Ukraine had achieved his goals,” said James Rodgers, author of the coming book “The Return of Russia”.
The current conversation process, in which Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have met three times since May, was an attempt by Moscow to convince Trump that Putin is not rejecting peace, the first source said that the conversations had no real substance, apart from discussions about humanitarian exchanges.
Russia says that it is serious about the match of a long -term peace in the negotiations, but that the process is complicated because the views of the two parties are so far apart. Putin described the conversations as positive last week.
Moscow's explained demands include a complete Ukrainian withdrawal from the four regions and acceptance by Kyiv of neutral status and limits for the size of the army – demanded by Ukraine.
In a sign that there is another chance to close a deal for the deadline, it is expected that Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit Russia this week, after an escalation in rhetoric between Trump and Moscow about risks of Nuclear War.
“President Trump wants to stop the murder, so he sells American weapons to the NATO members and threatens Putin with corrosive rates and sanctions if he does not agree with a ceasefire,” said spokeswoman Anna Kelly of the White House in response to a request for comment.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comments for this story. All sources spoke with Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Trump, who has praised Putin in the past and held the prospect of lucrative business deals between the two countries, has recently pronounced growing impatient with the Russian president. He complained about what he called Putin's “nonsense” and described Russia's ruthless bombing of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities as “disgusting”.
The Kremlin has said that it noted Trump's statements, but it has refused to respond to them.
The Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko called on the world last week to respond with “maximum pressure” after the worst Russian air raid of the year 31 people in Kiev, including five children, killed Russia's reaction to Trump's deadline.
Forces are moving forward
The first source said that Putin was private concerned about the recent deterioration of American ties. Putin still retains the hope that Russia can become friends again with America and act with the West, and “he is worried” about Trump's irritation, this person said.
But with the armed forces of Moscow on the battlefield and Ukraine under heavy military pressure, Putin does not believe that it is now time to end the war, the source said, adding that neither the Russian people nor the army would understand if he stops now.
Rodgers, the author, said that Putin invested his political reputation and inheritance in the war in Ukraine.
“We know from his earlier writings and statements that he sees himself as part of a strong tradition of standing up to the West and the rest of the world to defend the interests of Russia,” he said.
The Kremlin leader appreciates the relationship with Trump and does not want to make him angry, “he just has a top priority – Putin can't afford to end the war just because Trump wants it,” said the second Russian source.
A third person who was familiar with Kremlin's thinking, also said that Russia wanted to take all four regions and did not see logic stop in a time of battlefield profits during the Russian summer offensive.
In the past three months, Ukraine has some of the largest territorial losses from 2025 ago, including 502 square kilometers in July, according to Black Bird Group, a military analysis center established in Finland. In total, Russia occupied a fifth of Ukraine.
The Russian staff of the military general has told Putin that the Ukrainian front will crumble over two or three months, the first person said.
However, Russia's recent profit remains relatively small in purely territorial terms, with only 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles) taken from Ukraine since the beginning of last year, less than 1% of the total territory of the country, according to a June report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based based on the Thinks.
Ukrainian and Western military sources, acknowledge that Russia makes a profit, but only gradually and with heavy victims. The Russian war bloggers say that the armed forces of Moscow were bogged down during the current summer offensive in areas where the site and the dense urban landscape prefer Ukraine, but judge that other areas must be faster to take.
'He has made threats earlier'
Trump's threat of sanctions was “painful and unpleasant”, but not a catastrophe, the second source said. The third source said that there was a feeling in Moscow that “there is not much anymore that they can visit us”.
It was also not clear whether Trump would follow his ultimatum, this person said, adding that “he made threats earlier” and then did not act, or changed his mind.
The source also said it was difficult to imagine that China would stop buying Russian oil on Trump instructions, and that his actions were at the risk of having the opposite effect by stimulating oil prices higher.
As a result of earlier sanctrounds, Russian oil and gas expansions have taken great hits in their income and foreign direct investments in the country fell by 63%last year, according to the UN's trade data. About $ 300 billion in assets from the central bank is frozen in foreign areas of law.
But Russia's ability to wage war is unobstructed, partly thanks to the ammunition stocks from North Korea and the import from China of components for double use use that have sustained a huge increase in weapon production. The Kremlin has repeatedly said that Russia has some “immunity” for sanctions.
Trump has recognized the skill of Russia to have the measures committed. “They are cunning characters and they are pretty good at avoiding sanctions, so we will see what is happening,” he told reporters at the weekend, when he was asked what his reaction would be if Russia would not agree to a cease -the fire.
De eerste Russische bron merkte op dat Poetin, bij het nastreven van het conflict, een Amerikaans aanbod in maart de rug toe keerde dat Washington, in ruil voor zijn overeenkomst met een volledig staakt -het -vuren, Amerikaanse sancties zou verwijderen, het Russische bezit van de Krim erkent – bijgevoegd uit Oekraïne in 2014 – en de facto Russische controle van de Russische controle van het terrein van de krachten zou erkennen sinds The forces since 2022.
The source called the offer a “fantastic opportunity,” but said that stopping a war was much more difficult than starting.
(Reporting by Darya Korsunskaya and Andrew Osborn; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; adaptation by Frank Jack Daniel)
