Sources reportedly aware of the Kremlin talks told Reuters on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate a peace treaty with Ukraine. The terms are fairly uncomplicated: Russia gets what it wants and can resume hostilities at any time if Putin’s conditions are not met.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to end the war in Ukraine through a negotiated ceasefire that recognizes the current front lines, four Russian sources told Reuters. He is ready to keep fighting if Kiev and the West do not respond.
Three of the sources familiar with the discussions in Putin’s entourage said the veteran Russian leader had expressed his frustration to a miniature group of advisers over what he saw as Western-backed attempts to hamper negotiations, as well as over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to rule out talks.
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Putin’s insistence on locking in all battlefield gains in an agreement is non-negotiable, all sources say.
However, Putin would be willing to settle for the land currently at his disposal and freeze the conflict on the current front lines, four of the sources said.
“Putin will say that we won, that NATO attacked us and we preserved our sovereignty, that we have a land corridor to Crimea, which is true,” said one of them, giving his own analysis.
If the conflict were frozen along current lines, Russia would remain in possession of significant parts of four Ukrainian regions that it formally annexed to Russia in September 2022, but would not have full control over any of them.
Such an arrangement would fall low of the goals Moscow set for itself when it declared that the four Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson now belonged entirely to Moscow.
A return of the four regions, which according to the Russian Constitution belonged permanently to Russia, could not be an option, said Peskov.
Negotiations don’t start with maximum demands unless you can get them. Even the alleged Putin confidants who spoke to Reuters for the report admit that Putin is tired of the war and wants to move on.
Let me pause here and say: Anyone who believes that five members of Putin’s entourage spoke to Reuters about Putin’s personal position on peace talks without acting on Putin’s orders is a danger to themselves and others. The fact that no one in the Kremlin has officially acknowledged this alleged ceasefire offer says everything one needs to know about the seriousness of the offer.
Three sources said Putin was aware that any dramatic new advance would require another nationwide mobilization, which he did not want. A source who knows the Russian president said his popularity dropped after the first mobilization in September 2022.
The draft frightened parts of the Russian population and caused hundreds of thousands of conscripts to leave the country. Polls showed that Putin’s popularity fell by several percentage points.
Russia itself admits that any peace agreement must safeguard current Russian gains. The problem, as Dmitry “Pornstache” Peskov said, is that since the beginning of the war Russia has annexed a total of four Ukrainian oblasts and reversing this annexation is not up for discussion.
BACKGROUND: Putin’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory marks the beginning of a war with no discernible end
This means that Russia not only insists on keeping the territories it has conquered, but even demands that Ukraine give up more territories as a condition for negotiations.
A statement by the Russian ambassador to the United States made this very clear.
Russian Ambassador to the USA.
Basically: “Give up 4 regions and we will pause the war until we can strike again.”
I just have no idea how the @White House intends to end this war on favorable terms with its “cautious”
Approach🤷♂️So the war will continue for years to come… pic.twitter.com/nXSWdv1Wvl
— Andriy Haydash (@andriyhaydash) May 25, 2024
It is also tough to see how the negotiations are progressing, since Putin basically said when the Reuters story ran as an “exclusive” that Zelenskyj was not party to the talks.
“We are aware that the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian head of state has expired.” Therefore, it is “not an idle question” with whom Moscow should negotiate.
The real purpose of the conference in Geneva is to confirm Zelensky’s legitimacy, but “these PR measures have no significance for legal documents.”
Russia should ensure that if negotiations resume, it will negotiate with legitimate Ukrainian authorities, but Ukraine will have to assess their legitimacy. “First and foremost, I think, from the point of view of parliament, the Constitutional Court or other institutions.”
If we don’t see this offer as a propaganda ploy designed to boost the mood and imagination of Putin’s fan club in the West, we’re probably idiots who deserve whatever comes next.
It is compelling to see that Peskov even used some of the phrasing of the isolationist and Putinist right in his Reuters article, although he could have used a better translator.
When asked for comment, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the country did not want an “eternal war”.
No, Mr. Peskov, the term is “eternal war.” You can read it in the RedState comments every time an article about the Ukraine war is published.
The Russians are merely spreading a narrative ahead of the international peace conference taking place in Switzerland on June 15 and 16.
Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. The Russian proposal – if it is even solemn – rewards Russia for criminal behavior, returns control of Russian foreign assets to Moscow, lifts war-related economic sanctions, and sets the stage for another Russian invasion. Nothing about the Russian plan is even remotely just, and no sane government would consider it. Russia knows this, and they don’t want to consider it. They want major social media accounts and some Republican congressmen and senators to have arguments to push Putin’s agenda.
