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.

Ukraine and the US are to hold crunch peace talks in Saudi Arabia from Tuesday following a tense few weeks in which relations between Kyiv and Washington looked more fraught than ever. US officials have said they are planning on using the meeting with their Ukrainian counterparts to determine whether Kyiv is willing to make material concessions to