G7 leaders agreed on Thursday to a new $50 billion loan for Ukraine, funded by profits from frozen Russian assets.
President Vladimir Putin stated on Friday that Russia would cease fire and begin peace talks if Ukraine abandoned its NATO aspirations and withdrew its forces from four Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow.
"As soon as Kyiv declares its readiness to do this, starts withdrawing troops, and officially renounces plans to join NATO, we will immediately, literally that very minute, cease fire and begin talks," Putin said.
"The conditions are very simple," Putin elaborated, specifying the full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the entire territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia in eastern and southern Ukraine.
"I repeat, we will do this immediately. Naturally, we will simultaneously guarantee the unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations."
Putin also warned that the standoff between Moscow and the West was nearing "the point of no return" and boasted about Russia's "largest arsenal of nuclear weapons." He has frequently used nuclear rhetoric throughout the conflict, framing it as part of a broader "hybrid war" between Russia and the NATO alliance.
Additionally, Putin criticized a Ukraine peace forum taking place in Switzerland this weekend as a "trick to distract everybody," noting that Moscow was not invited to the conference, which will be attended by leaders and senior officials from around 90 countries and international organizations.
In his address on Friday, Putin condemned the freezing of Russian assets abroad as "theft" and warned it would "not go unpunished." He argued that the West's treatment of Moscow demonstrated that any country could be subject to a similar asset freeze.
"Despite all the chicanery, theft will certainly remain theft. And it will not go unpunished," Putin said. "Now it is becoming obvious to all countries, companies, [and] sovereign funds that their assets and reserves are far from safe in both the legal and economic sense of the word. Anyone could be next in line for expropriation by the US and the West."
G7 leaders agreed on Thursday to the new $50 billion loan for Ukraine, a move US President Joe Biden said showed Moscow "we're not backing down." The G7 and the EU froze around $325 billion of Russian central bank reserves shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On Friday, Putin said Western countries were attempting to devise "some kind of legal basis" to justify these actions.
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