(Tribune News Service) — Russia said it’s prepared to discuss a potential cease-fire in Ukraine with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, even as the conflict intensifies on all fronts with the warring sides seeking to strengthen their hands ahead of any talks.
The comments by President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman met with immediate skepticism from Western officials as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine surpassed its 1,000th day, with Moscow’s forces making fresh gains in eastern Ukraine.
Putin has “more than once, or more precisely, constantly, stated that he is ready for contacts and negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, according to the state-run Tass news service.
Russian forces meanwhile have intensified their bombardment of Ukraine in recent days, while issuing a revamped nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for a potential atomic response. The U.S. and several European nations closed embassies in Kyiv Wednesday in anticipation of a potentially significant air attack, as a missile alert was announced in several regions, including the capital.
Peskov’s comments were in response to a report from Reuters that Moscow could be open to negotiations on halting the fighting roughly along current battle lines. The report cited five unidentified, current and former Russian officials.
Several officials from NATO countries said their assessment remained that Putin wasn’t ready for serious talks or making concessions. Russia’s focus remains on expanding its gains on Ukrainian territory and expelling Ukrainian forces from its Kursk region, where they hold territory after an incursion earlier this year, before any eventual deal, two people close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg News.
“No matter what Putin says, he doesn’t want peace and is not ready to negotiate it,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters en route to the Group of 20 summit in Brazil. “Putin’s intention is to intensify the combat, we’ve seen this for weeks.”
Four regions
Reuters reported that Putin may agree to discuss a carve-up of four regions in Ukraine — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — that Russia illegally declared annexed in 2022, but doesn’t fully control. The Russian leader has declared them to be “forever” part of his country, although only about 77% of the four regions are under the Kremlin’s control, according to Bloomberg calculations based on open-source data.
Russia may also be ready to pull out its forces from small slices of territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, according to two of the officials cited in the report.
The Kremlin spokesman cautioned that “freezing this conflict will not work for us,” according to Tass.
“Putin has not made any final decision” on his approach to peace talks, said Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser. “He would prefer not to pay the high price of pursuing the offensive but he’s even less willing to pay such a high price for a peace agreement that’s not in Russia’s interests.”
With Trump set to take office in two months, both sides sought to set parameters for what will likely be difficult dealmaking.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday his country would make no concessions on sovereignty or territory. Zelenskyy’s own formula for peace is based on obtaining a clear path to North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership and security guarantees for protection until it joins.
Trump has vowed to end the war quickly, without saying how. His return to the White House also raises the prospect of a sharp cut in U.S. aid to Ukraine. He could also threaten to bolster support to Kyiv to try to pressure Russia into a deal. Officials in Kyiv and Moscow are discussing preparations for the shift coming in Washington.
Putin has said previously he remains open to talks, but any agreement must take into account Russia’s security interests and “realities” on the ground. In June, he laid out his opening position, demanding Ukraine withdraw fully from the four regions Russia has unilaterally claimed as its own and give up its NATO ambitions before a truce could take effect.
Position of strength
Putin still insists on Ukraine abandoning its ambitions to join NATO and a ban on the alliance’s troops being stationed on Ukrainian soil, but he’s ready to discuss security guarantees for the neighboring state, according to the Reuters report.
Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles inside Russia could complicate and delay any settlement, Reuters cited two of the people as saying.
Still, the U.S. authorization on using the missiles allows Ukraine to talk to Russia from a position of strength, Ukraine’s ambassador to the European Union Vsevolod Chentsov told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday.
The change in the administration’s stance was in part due to North Korea’s decision to send more than 10,000 troops to Kursk as part of a deepening alliance with Moscow.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the worst hostilities in Europe since World War II and the most dangerous stand-off with the West in decades. The U.S. and its allies have poured tens of billions of dollars into military and financial aid for Ukraine, but Kyiv has been steadily losing ground in the east in recent months.
On Tuesday, Putin signed a decree lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, just days after Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to carry out deep strikes with U.S.-delivered missiles. Moscow on Tuesday said Ukraine used U.S.-made ATACMS to strike Russian territory for the first time.
With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska, Olesia Safronova, Alberto Nardelli, Maxim Edwards and Samy Adghirni.
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