The idea is to freeze the conflict within the current borders
Russian President Vladimir Putin has conveyed through diplomatic channels that he is ready for a ceasefire in Ukraine, but only if the conflict is frozen within the current borders.
This is what the New York Times writes, citing two former high-ranking Russian officials and interlocutors from the US and other Western countries. According to the media, the message has been sent since at least September. Thus, beyond the furious public talk of the war, Putin is informally signaling a “willingness to declare victory and move on.”
Make it look like a win
Behind the confidence that the Kremlin shows publicly, there is a desire to reach an agreement at the end, as long as something is presented as a victory, the American publication continues. However, depending on the country from which the interlocutors are, the messages are different: the Americans allow an attempt to deceive the Russian leader, the Russians – an opportunity to withdraw the proposal if Moscow succeeds on the battlefield (as the same publication and a number of observers have noted recently, Russia regains the initiative in the battles).
An African source who visited Russia in June thinks otherwise: it’s not that Putin wants to negotiate, he just might want to have a well-prepared channel for “when the time comes.”
Putin “isn’t ready to budge an inch”, says one of the Russian sources. That proposal, another American says, would keep Ukraine independent, but with 20 percent of its territory (which Moscow currently holds) annexed to Russia.
At the same time, interlocutors of the publication claim, Putin, although he is talking about a ceasefire, is waiting for a more concrete proposal. And now no Ukrainian politician would agree to Russia receiving so many territories.
A combination of factors
According to US officials, the Russian leader also offered a ceasefire in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were making progress in retaking parts of Kharkiv and Kherson regions. And then there was talk of preserving the territorial status quo. A similar message from a little over a year ago has not been reported until now.
Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told the New York Times that the conceptually presented theses are “false”. Russia would end the war when it achieved its familiar (unchanged) goals – “demilitarization”, “denazification” and neutral status for Ukraine.
Already in the first year of the war, Russian representatives simultaneously stated that until the control of Donbas, the objectives of the “special military operation” (as Russia calls the war) remain valid and that its capture (Ukraine still controls parts of its two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk) is the focus of the invasion that began on February 24, 2022.
In this case, Putin sees a combination of factors making the moment opportune for an agreement: a battlefield that evokes the thought of a stalemate; the fallout from the disappointing Ukrainian counter-offensive; the waning support of the West (the disputes over the granting of tens of billions in new aid); the diversion of attention past the war in Gaza.
“Impossible to stop” the war
The New York Times also reports that, regardless of discussions and proposals for negotiations in the first year of the war, such a move seems impossible on Putin’s part. Rather, behind Putin’s public silence was a determination, a desire to be informed about even the smallest detail about the conflict (according to an interlocutor, he conducted two video conferences a day to learn everything).
“It is impossible to stop the war,” according to one of the interlocutors who spoke to a high-ranking Russian military official.
At the same time, by the end of the summer, after Ukraine’s counter-offensive and the rebellion of businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, the situation was turning in Moscow’s favor. The tension of the past months has disappeared, according to Kyrgyz Prime Minister Akilbek Zhaparov. Putin’s confidence grew, and the war unleashed by the Gaza terror attack changed his calculations even more.
Thus, signals have been reaching Western representatives since at least September that Putin was interested in a ceasefire – including because of the reluctance to push the army’s capacity to the limit, writes “Diary“. An ideal time to present the status quo as a victory would be the presidential election in March, according to this view. American officials also believe that after these changes Putin has abandoned the idea that his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky should leave power. Even the controversial point on Ukraine’s entry into NATO would not be an obstacle to a future arrangement, given that Moscow does not expect the Alliance to accept Kiev in the foreseeable future.
2023-12-23 20:02:00
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