The war can end only if Ukraine becomes "non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear" and protects Russian-speakers, said Russia's Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu. His statement came while Ukrainian rescuers were still cleaning the rubble at a flattened Kyiv apartment block after the most massive Russian attack of the war.
The demands Shoigu listed on 14 May at the 21st Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek are the same ones Russia tabled at the failed Istanbul negotiations in March 2022, according to the Russian propaganda news outlet Sputnik.
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Shoigu's remarks emerged on the same day Russian missiles destroyed a Kyiv apartment building, killing at least 12 people, including two girls.
Russia fired more than 1,560 drones and 56 missiles in a two-day aerial assault on Ukraine. The demands were issued while US President Donald Trump was on his first visit to China in nine years.
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Shoigu's conditions
"We are interested in the final and complete return of Ukraine as a non-nuclear and non-aligned country," Shoigu said.
The most important thing, according to him, is that Ukraine must be a country that "respects the rights of citizens living on its territory."
"In this case, of course, we are interested in people who speak Russian, people deprived of the right to speak their own language," he claimed.
Shoigu also said Russia will "continue seeking international legal recognition of the territories' return to Russia", meaning recognition of the four Ukrainian oblasts Moscow claims to have annexed in September 2022.
He blamed the EU and NATO for Ukraine's "inability to negotiate," saying European member states "deliberately prolong the conflict" by supplying Ukraine with weapons.
Russia claims it controls more than it does
Shoigu told the summit that Russian forces "firmly hold the strategic initiative" and have taken more than 1,800 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory and over 80 settlements since the start of 2026. He claimed 100% control of Luhansk Oblast and 85% of Donetsk Oblast.
The territorial framing skips what Russia does not control. In Kherson Oblast, the regional capital and the entire right bank of the Dnipro remain under Ukrainian control.
In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Russia holds roughly 70%, while the regional capital remains Ukrainian. The four-oblast demand Russia keeps repeating covers significant territory it has not captured in nearly four years of fighting.
