Russia will seek guarantees that Nato will exclude Ukraine from membership and that Ukraine will remain neutral in any peace deal, a Russian deputy foreign minister said. "We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement," Alexander Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia.

Russia said on Thursday there was no doubt that its troops would soon complete the task of clearing out Ukrainian forces from Russia's Kursk region where they have held a pocket of territory for more than seven months.