Russia is carving out a "security zone" inside Ukraine along its shared border that will be off the table in any peace talks, President Vladimir Putin said on October 16, Reuters reported.
"The Russian armed forces were tasked not only with expelling the enemy from our land but also with establishing a security zone in the adjacent territory. This task is being carried out successfully," Putin said in televised comments, wearing military uniform on a visit to a command post. "Our goal is to ensure the absolute security of Russia's border regions for the future, and we do not plan to make this a subject for potential peace negotiations with Ukraine.”
Putin has talked about a buffer zone before but has never spelt out its size or ruled it out of talks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the planned zone ran for 660 km along the border, of which 70% was already under Russian control, but did not say how deep it would reach into Ukraine.
The announcement represents an escalation of Russia’s war goals. Previously, Putin has said that Ukraine must recognise the “realities on the ground” which is widely taken to mean Bankova must cede the rest of Donbas not already under Russian occupation, plus the main points agreed at in the 2022 Istanbul peace deal.
The new buffer zone means taking new lands in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, which are not among the four Ukrainian regions Moscow has claimed as its own since 2022, so the demand adds to rather than replaces Russia's existing territorial claims.
Putin presented the zone as a response to Ukraine's 2024-2025 Kursk incursion by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). He said Russian forces had yet to capture just over 10% of Donetsk region, a key objective, and 16.5% of Zaporizhzhia region, and praised the effectiveness of Russian strikes on Ukrainian military, industrial and logistics targets, while conceding there was still room to improve Russia's own air defences.
The hawkish tone comes at a sensitive point in the diplomacy. Washington and European capitals are discussing a four-part peace proposal that Kyiv views with scepticism, and US President Donald Trump's diesel deal with Moscow has soured his relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On the same day, Putin's investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev said Russia and the US were discussing joint projects including nuclear-powered data centres.
Neither side is letting up. Ukrainian drones have hit several Russian data centres and a large oil refinery in the past nine days, while Russia has kept up its strikes on Ukrainian cities, power plants and ports.