Vladimir Putin is demanding Ukraine must never be allowed to join Nato as a condition of any ceasefire deal as the world continues to push for an end to the war

Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military fatigues, ordered the swift defeat of Ukrainian forces in western Russia, a signal to the United States that Moscow holds the military initiative as they prepare to discuss a ceasefire.

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.