Russia Tells OSCE It Will Not Accept a Ukraine Ceasefire Without a 'Root Causes' Settlement

September 17, 2026 — Russia's permanent representative to the OSCE, Dmitry Polyansky, told a closed session of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna that Moscow 'will never agree to a ceasefire without reaching a comprehensive understanding of the key parameters of the peace agreements that would eliminate the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis.' Polyansky said Russia's conditions for halting hostilities are well known and unchanged, and that Russia intends to continue its military campaign 'until its goals are fully achieved, either peacefully or militarily,' while also warning that any NATO troop presence in Ukraine would be treated as the alliance's direct participation in the war. The statement reiterates Moscow's longstanding position roughly a week after Witkoff and Kushner's first-ever Kyiv visit and a Trump-Putin call (Sep 8) that ended without a ceasefire, and underscores why Ukraine remains outside the tracker's in-force ceasefire count.