Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a ceasefire in Ukraine, Reuters reported. It was sent to the US and was rejected, Reuters reports.
The failure of Putin’s proposal comes at the start of the third year of Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II and shows how far apart the world’s two biggest nuclear powers remain.
According to Reuters’ sources, Russia’s request did not come through official channels, but through intermediaries. The reason for the refusal was that Washington did not want to participate in negotiations without Ukraine.
Putin sent signals to Washington in 2023 through intermediaries and Moscow’s Arab partners in the Middle East indicating he was willing to consider a ceasefire in Ukraine, Russian sources told Reuters.
What was the formula?
Putin has offered to freeze the conflict along current lines, but without ceding any Ukrainian territory controlled by Russia. His request is along the lines of what the Kremlin sees as the best path to some kind of peace.
A second Russian source has confirmed the refusal of the US on the grounds that Ukraine was not included in the talks. According to a third source from Moscow, the US did not want to pressure Ukraine.
The Kremlin, the White House, the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declined to comment.
How was the contact made?
The mediators met in Turkey at the very end of 2023, according to the Russian sources. Earlier in September, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Turkish President Recep Erdogan.
A fourth diplomatic source said there had been informal Russian-American contacts through intermediaries at the initiative of Russia, but they had been fruitless.
According to the three Russian sources, Putin’s signal was relayed to Washington, where she held a meeting with senior US officials – White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Bill Burns and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
The idea was for Sullivan to speak with Putin’s adviser, Yuri Ushakov, and then determine the next steps.
When the conversation took place, Sullivan told Ushakov that Washington was willing to talk about other aspects of the relationship, but would not talk about a ceasefire without Ukrainesays one of the Russian sources.
A US official declined to comment on information about Sullivan’s alleged calls and whether such a conversation with Ushakov took place.
Reactions in the Kremlin after the US refusal
One of the Russian sources expressed frustration with the United States over Washington’s insistence that it will not push Ukraine toward negotiations, given that the United States is helping finance the war.
“Putin said he knew the US wouldn’t do anything. They cut the root of contacts that took two months to establish,” the Russian source told Reuters.
The other Russian source said the United States did not seem to believe Putin was sincere.
“Americans didn’t believe that Putin was sincere about a ceasefire, but he was and is. He is willing to discuss a ceasefire, but also Putin is willing to fight as long as it takes.” Russia can beat as much as necessary,” the Russian source said.
The Kremlin does not see much point in further contacts with the US on the issue, Russian sources said, so the war will continue.
There is no indication that Ukrainian leaders, who have vowed to take back all the territory, would agree to such a deal to freeze the conflict. Some US officials say this may be a familiar Kremlin misdirection attempt and does not reflect Putin’s genuine willingness to compromise, the New York Times reports.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Federation gathered 100 thousand military personnel along the border, as claimed to be conducting “routine exercises”.
Previous “Suggestions”
This is not the first time that Russia has “circumvented” the existence of other countries by making “proposals” to the United States. At the end of 2021, Russia published drafts of a treaty with the US and an agreement with NATO on security guarantees.
In the position of the Russian Foreign Ministry since January 2022 The Russian Federation has announced that it wants NATO to withdraw from Bulgaria and Romania. Moscow announced that it was a question of withdrawing foreign forces, equipment and armaments, and other steps, with the aim of returning to the configuration of 1997, on the territory of countries that were not members of NATO on that date.
The war in Ukraine and the US election campaign
The two main candidates for the next US presidential term are already betting on the war in Ukraine as a major point of conflict between them.
Donald Trump announced that would “encourage” Russia to attack any NATO member countrywhich does not fulfill its financial obligations to the defense alliance, referring to the commitment made after the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by the countries of the Alliance within the next 10 years to start allocating 2% of their GDP for defense.
For Biden, these comments send a “dangerous and shocking” signal.
“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it. The worst thing is that he means it seriously,” the US president pointed out.
“Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unwarranted. It threatens American national security, global stability and our economy at home,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement on Saturday.
Trump’s rhetoric against NATO is not from now. It was also part of his election campaign in 2016, when he again criticized the countries of the Alliance and the funds from their budgets that they allocate for defense. Then he described the dissolution of NATO as “something not so bad, because the organization has lived its time.”
In 2018, countries agreed to increase defense budgetsand Trump said:
„The US relationship with NATO remains very strong. The main reason for this is the decisions made and commitments made for greater defense spending. It was amazing”.
2024-02-13 19:32:01
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