Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Kazbek Kokov, head of the North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria, in Moscow, Russia December 16, 2025. Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS
MOSCOW, Dec 17 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Russia would take more land in Ukraine by force if Kyiv and European politicians whom he cast as "young pigs" did not engage over U.S. proposals for a peace settlement.
The United States has held talks with Russia, and separately with Kyiv and European leaders, on proposals for ending the war in Ukraine but no deal has been reached. Kyiv and its European allies are concerned by demands for Ukrainian territorial concessions and Ukraine wants stronger security guarantees.
At an annual Defence Ministry meeting, Putin said Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, was advancing on all fronts and would achieve its aims by force or through diplomacy.
"If the opposing side and their foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive discussions, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means," Putin said.
Russia says it controls about 19% of Ukraine, including the Crimea peninsula which it annexed in 2014, as well as most of the eastern Donbas region, much of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, and slivers of four other regions.
Russia says Crimea, Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are now parts of Russia. Ukraine says it will never accept that, and almost all countries consider the regions to be part of Ukraine.
Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said a task for 2026 was to increase the pace of Russia's offensive. A slide shown during a speech he delivered said Russia was spending 5.1% of gross domestic product on the war in 2025.
PUTIN SAYS EUROPEAN LEADERS WHIP UP HYSTERIA
European leaders say they stand with Kyiv and that Russia should not be rewarded for the war in Ukraine, which followed several years of fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region.
Putin said former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration had sought to destroy Russia and that European politicians had also been pursuing the same objective, a charge denied by European leaders.
He accused European politicians - whom he described as "shoats, or "young pigs" - of whipping up hysteria about a potential war with Russia by warning that Moscow could one day attack a country in the NATO military alliance.
"I have repeatedly stated: this is a lie, nonsense, pure nonsense about some imaginary Russian threat to European countries. But this is being done quite deliberately," Putin said.
Some European leaders have accused Russia of having no real intention of engaging in peace talks. Directing similar criticism at Europe, Belousov said European powers were trying to scuttle attempts to end the war and talking of a war between Russia and NATO within a few years.
"Such a policy creates real prerequisites for the continuation of military operations next year, 2026," he said.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Vladimir Soldatkin, Writing by Mark Trevelyan, Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Timothy Heritage)
