Russian officials have been making very clear demands in terms of international relations for two decades. Russia has been calling for a return to the Minsk II ceasefire agreement, and before that calling for the agreement to be followed by all signatories. As the byline of this article notes, Russia has long opposed Ukrainian membership in NATO, and for well communicated reasons. They were even promised a generation ago that NATO would expand no further eastward than the former DDR, in response to their security and economic concerns.