Exclusive-Putin, who has stepped up to Ukraine, has his eyes on Trump’s peace deal

Written by Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a ceasefire in Ukraine with Donald Trump but is holding back on making any major concessions and is insisting that Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking told Reuters.

US President-elect Trump, who has vowed to quickly end the conflict, is returning to the White House at a time of rising Russia. Moscow controls a part of Ukraine the size of the US state of Virginia and has been advancing at a rapid pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.

In the first detailed report of what President Putin would accept in any deal Trump makes, five current and former Russian officials said the Kremlin would be more willing to end the conflict ahead of time.

There may be room for negotiation over the precise demarcation of the four eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to three people who all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

While Moscow claims that these four regions are completely part of Russia, protected by the country’s nuclear umbrella, its ground forces control 70-80% of the 26,000 square km area that is still held by the Ukrainian military, open source data previously. line shows.

Russia may also be open to withdrawing from the small territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in northern and southern Ukraine, two officials said.

Putin said this month that any ceasefire deal must reflect the “reality” on the ground but he feared a temporary deal would allow the West to attack Ukraine again.

“If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine that there is a relationship between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin told the Valdai talks on November 7.

“Why? Because this would mean that Ukraine will always be used as a tool in the wrong hands and harm the interests of the Russian Federation.”

Two sources said outgoing US President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire US ATACMS missiles deep into Russia could complicate and delay any settlement – and strengthen Moscow’s demands as ministers seek more of Ukraine. On Tuesday, Kyiv used the missiles to attack Russian territory for the first time, according to Moscow, which criticized the move as a major escalation.

If an end to hostilities is not agreed, the two sources said, Russia will continue to fight.

“Putin has already said that de-escalation will not work in any way,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters hours before the Russians reported the ATACMS strikes. “And the authorization of the missiles is a very dangerous escalation on the part of the United States.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this article.

Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, told Reuters about the incoming US president: “He is the only person who can bring the two sides together to negotiate peace, and work to end the war and stop the killing.”

Real estate billionaire Trump, author of the 1987 book “Trump: the Art of the Deal”, said he would speak directly to Putin in his efforts to broker a peace deal, although he did not provide details on how to reconcile the warring parties. , both of which show little sign of regression.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that his country will not rest until every last Russian soldier is withdrawn from its territory – based on the borders established after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – although top US generals have publicly stated that this is too ambitious. purpose.

On June 14, Putin laid out his immediate military goals: Ukraine must abandon its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all four Ukrainian regions that are claimed and controlled by Russia.

DEFENSE GUARANTEES, MILITARY LIMITATIONS

While Russia will not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, or the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil, it is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv, according to five current and former officials.

Other Ukrainian concessions the Kremlin could push for include Kyiv agreeing to limit the size of its armed forces and a commitment not to ban the use of the Russian language, the people said.

Dimitri Simes, who immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1973 and is one of America’s top Russia experts, said an armistice could be reached quickly to end the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers. it displaced millions of civilians.

But a comprehensive, lasting deal that addressed Ukraine’s security issues with Russia would be a major challenge to establish, he added.

“A major agreement, in my opinion, would be very difficult to reach as the positions of the two sides are very far apart.”

‘THE BAD TRUTH: RUSSIA IS WINNING’

Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, a peninsula annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80% of the Donbas regions – Donetsk and Luhansk – and more than 70% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. It also holds less than 3% of Kharkiv region and a sliver of Mykolaiv.

In total, Russia has more than 110,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine owns about 650 square kilometers of Russia’s Kursk region.

Internally, Putin could sell the ceasefire agreement that saw Russia hold on to large parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions as a victory that guaranteed the protection of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and secured the bridge to Crimea, according to one of the sources.

The future of Crimea itself does not need to be discussed, say all Russian officials.

One of the officials, a senior source with knowledge of high-level Kremlin talks, said the West would have to accept the “hard truth” that all the support it has given Ukraine cannot prevent Russia from winning the war.

Putin, a former KGB commander who watched the Soviet Union collapse while sitting in Dresden, decided to attack Ukraine himself with limited advice from a small group of trusted advisers, 10 Russian sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking told Reuters.

He will have a say in any ceasefire, according to five current and former officials.

A Kremlin official is presenting what he calls “special military operations” in Ukraine as a watershed moment when Moscow finally stands up to what it sees as Western arrogance that has expanded NATO eastward along Russia’s borders and meddled in what Moscow sees as political interference. as its backyard, it includes Georgia and, most importantly, Ukraine.

Kyiv and the West say the attack was an attempt to seize Ukrainian territory.

When asked what an end to the war might look like, the two Russian sources referred to a draft agreement that was almost agreed to in April 2022 after talks in Istanbul, and which Putin has publicly referred to as a possible basis for a deal.

Under that framework, a copy of which Reuters has seen, Ukraine must agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

One of the Russian officials said there would be no deal unless Ukraine received security guarantees, adding: “The question is how to avoid a deal that locks the West into direct confrontation with Russia one day.”

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; Editing by Pravin Char)