Is Russia's Putin ready to stop Ukraine war along current front line?

Kyiv, Ukraine – Finishing a cigarette with a final deep puff outside a hospital building in central Kyiv, a wounded Ukrainian drone operator sums up Russian President Vladimir Putin's readiness to end the Ukraine war along the current front lines. "Don't trust these leaks, the … vampire is just dragging the talks out," Arseny, a 31-year-old recovering from a cranial wound that left him blind in one eye, told Al Jazeera while standing near a blossoming apple tree. He referred to a Financial Times report on Tuesday that suggested that Putin could "relinquish" Moscow's claims on four partly-occupied Ukrainian regions. In September 2022, seven months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Moscow recognised the regions as part of Russia even though it did not fully control them – and began losing some occupied areas within weeks. In return for the Kremlin's concession, the US may recognise Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014, as part of Russia, and "acknowledge" the Kremlin's de facto control over the four regions' occupied parts, the Financial Times claimed, citing officials familiar with the talks.