Russia's offer to end its more-than-two-year-old war in Ukraine if the country ditches its Nato ambitions and yields four southeastern provinces is "not a peace proposal but one for surrender", according to Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani.
"President (Vladimir) Putin's proposal is not a peace proposal but one for surrender," Tajani told the joint committees of the lower and upper houses of parliament on Tuesday.
"As such it is unacceptable. Peace is something else. We continue to work for real peace," Tajani underlined.
Besides abandoning its hope of joining Nato, Ukraine must hand over the entirety of the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, Putin stated on Friday.
Putin also reiterated his demand Ukraine's demilitarisation which he made when he launched a full-scale invasion of the former Soviet republic on 24 February 2022 and said Western sanctions must end for a peace deal.
Putin's proposal was quickly rejected by Kiev as surrender. In an interview with Italy's SkyTG24 news channel, president Volodymyr Zelensky slammed Putin's offer as an untrustworthy ultimatum and a revival of Nazism.
Russia only partly controls Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - an act deemed illegal by most countries at the UN. It illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.
