Russia has repeatedly painted modern Ukraine as a Nazi state, in a crass distortion of history. Putin had already seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula eight years earlier, after a revolution that ousted Ukraine's pro-Russian president and replaced him with a more pro-Western government.

Russia will seek a peace deal in Ukraine that safeguards its own long-term security and will not retreat from the gains it has made in the conflict, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday in comments to relatives of soldiers killed there.

Vladimir Putin is reportedly unwilling to make any concessions in order to reach a peace agreement in Ukraine. As the war enters its fourth year, Donald Trump is actively trying to negotiate a swift peace deal with Russia,