Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after years of conflict in the east; Russia now controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory. Western European countries characterize the invasion as an imperial-style land grab, while Russia frames the conflict as resistance to a declining West and NATO expansion that humiliated Russia after 1989. On the SCO summit sidelines, leaders from Russia, India and China appeared cordial. Putin insisted that sustainable settlement requires eliminating the root causes of the crisis and restoring a "fair balance in the security sphere," effectively demanding NATO and European security concessions. He seeks written guarantees on NATO expansion and sanctions relief and pointed to prior understandings with the United States and proposals from China and India.
Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine. Ukraine and Western European powers describe the invasion as a brutal imperial-style land grab. Putin casts the war as a battle with a declining West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging NATO eastwards.
Speaking at the summit, Putin said the West had tried to bring Ukraine into the West's orbit and then sought to entice the former Soviet republic into the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. "In order for a Ukrainian settlement to be sustainable and long-term, the root causes of the crisis, which I have just mentioned and which I have repeatedly mentioned before, must be eliminated," Putin said.
Reuters reported in May that Putin's conditions for ending the war include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards and lift a chunk of sanctions on Russia. Putin said that "understandings" he reached with U.S. President Donald Trump at a summit in Alaska in August opened a way to peace in Ukraine, which he would discuss with leaders attending the regional summit in China.
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