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Russian President Vladimir Putin remains committed to seizing all of Donetsk Oblast by force, the sources said. Moscow also plans to retain occupied border areas of Ukraine's Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts as a buffer zone.
Putin abandoned any territorial concessions after the Kremlin interpreted increasingly tough U.S. rhetoric as a sign that informal understandings reportedly reached at the Alaska summit with U.S. President Donald Trump had collapsed, the sources said.
Bloomberg's sources said the Kremlin's position hardened amid intensifying Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory, including on Moscow, which have damaged oil refineries and caused fuel shortages. An additional factor was Trump's approval of a new sanctions bill targeting Russia, which would impose tariffs of up to 100% on the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas.
Two of the sources said Moscow is prepared to return to negotiations only after fully occupying Donetsk Oblast. Russia's Defense Ministry has assured Putin that the goal could be achieved by the end of the year, according to the sources. However, a source close to the Russian Defense Ministry said many military officials consider that timeline unrealistic and expect full capture of Donetsk Oblast no earlier than 2027.
Read also: Putin holds firm on Donbas goal despite slowing Russian advance
Reuters noted on June 24 that three senior Russian officials began publicly accusing the United States, over the course of three days, of violating "agreements" purportedly reached at the August 2025 Alaska summit between Trump and Putin. Following that summit, Moscow frequently invoked the phrase "spirit of Anchorage" — Russia's term for the notion that Trump had endorsed the Kremlin's central demand that Ukraine cede all of the Donbas region, including unoccupied territory, in exchange for freezing the front line elsewhere. The United States has never confirmed any agreement from the summit, and none was announced publicly.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on June 25 that "there was no agreement in Alaska," only a proposal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to those remarks with criticism.
Putin acknowledged on June 28 that "there really were no agreements in Anchorage," while claiming that "the compromises discussed were exactly the proposals put forward to us by the American side."
On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara on July 8, Trump said he planned to hold a phone call with Putin and said he was applying significant pressure on the Kremlin leader. "We're putting pressure—a lot of pressure—on President Putin. I don't think he likes what's happening," Trump said.
Read also: Zelenskyy rejects Donbas concession in Abramovich backchannel mission to Putin
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said on July 9 that Trump had not called Putin following the NATO summit in Ankara.
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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
Section: Russian war
Author: Богуслав Романенко
