Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire with US President-elect Donald Trump but wants to keep Ukrainian land and demands Kyiv abandon its NATO ambitions, five Kremlin insiders told Reuters.
Trump, who has promised to swiftly end the war, takes office as Russia controls a Ukraine-sized territory comparable to Virginia and advances at its fastest pace since 2022 - although it comes at great cost to the Russian army.
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Russia currently occupies 18% of Ukraine, including all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, 80% of the Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions), and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. It also controls nearly 3% of the Kharkiv region and a small portion of Mykolaiv. In total, Russia holds over 110,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.
Meanwhile, via a counter-invasion, Ukraine controls and has stubbornly held approximately 650 square kilometers of Russia’s Kursk region, where Russian forces have so far run into a near solid wall in their attempts to dislodge.
Guy Faulconbridge, Reuters’ Moscow bureau chief, reports his sources – five current and former Russian officials – wrote that Putin might agree to halt his invasion, freezing the conflict along current front lines, with negotiation over dividing Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
Russia may also consider withdrawing from smaller areas in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. However, recent US approval for Ukraine’s use of ATACMS missiles on Russian territory could delay talks and harden Moscow’s demands, the insiders claimed to Reuters.
Ukrainian Naivety is Both Good and Bad
If no deal is struck, Moscow is prepared to continue fighting, the sources claimed.
“Putin has already said that freezing the conflict will not work in any way,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters hours before the Russians reported the ATACMS strikes. “And the missile authorization is a very dangerous escalation on the part of the United States.”
The US was in fact responding to Russia’s escalation.
Washington authorized Kyiv to use these weapons in response to new Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy – 120 missiles and 90 drones on Sunday – as well as the arrival of North Korean troops in Russia.
On June 14, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
While Russia will not tolerate Ukraine joining the NATO defensive alliance, or the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil - one of the few realistic options available to Ukraine to prevent future Russian invasion - it is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv, the Russian officials claimed to Reuters.
Other Ukrainian concessions the Kremlin could push for include Kyiv agreeing to limit the size of its armed forces - making it even less able to handle another Russian invasion - and committing not to restrict the use of the Russian language, the Russian insiders claimed.
Domestically, Putin could frame a ceasefire that secures most of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson as a victory, protecting Russian speakers and securing a land bridge to Crimea, a source told Reuters. All the Russian officials that Reuters spoke - who spoke under the assumption that Moscow would be able to define the terms of a peace deal - agreed that Russia being able to keep Ukraine’s Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014, is a non-negotiable.
A senior Kremlin insider, making no mention of the tens of thousands of Russian soldiers who’ve lost their lives in Putin’s surprise invasion nor the failure of Russia to take all of Ukraine in a week, nor the toll that its invasion has taken on the Russian economy, told Reuters that the West must accept the “harsh truth” that its support for Ukraine cannot stop Russia from claiming victory.
“He [Putin] will likewise have the deciding voice on any ceasefire, according to the five current and former officials,” the report reads.
What could a ceasefire look like?
When asked by Reuters about the framework of a possible ceasefire, two Russian sources referred to a draft agreement discussed in Istanbul in April 2022, which Putin has publicly cited as a potential basis for a "deal."
Under that draft, Ukraine would commit to permanent "neutrality" in exchange for non-specific "security guarantees" from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: the US, Britain, China, France, and Russia.
While Ukraine had sought NATO membership following Russia’s 2014 invasion, many would say its efforts to join the defensive alliance picked up pace after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion.
There would be no agreement unless Ukraine received security guarantees, however, without specifically mentioning any future Russian invasion plans, one Russian official added: “The question is how to avoid a deal that locks the West into a possible direct confrontation with Russia one day.”
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