Russia Stirs Ukraine Truce Speculation With Eye on Trump

Russia said it was ready to talk with US President-elect Donald Trump about a potential cease-fire with Ukraine, stoking speculation about how the conflict will eventually end even as it has intensified on all fronts.

Author of the article:

Bloomberg News

Henry Meyer

Published Nov 20, 2024  •  3 minute read

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(Bloomberg) — Russia said it was ready to talk with US President-elect Donald Trump about a potential cease-fire with Ukraine, stoking speculation about how the conflict will eventually end even as it has intensified on all fronts. 

The comments, which drew immediate skepticism from Western officials, were in response to an earlier Reuters report that Moscow could be open to negotiations on roughly halting the war along current battle-lines. The report cited five unidentified, current and former Russian officials.

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President Vladimir Putin has “more than once, or more precisely, constantly, stated that he is ready for contacts and negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. Still he cautioned, “freezing this conflict will not work for us,” the state-run Tass news service reported.

Several officials from NATO countries said their assessment remained that Putin wasn’t open to serious talks or making concessions. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Tuesday his country wouldn’t make concessions on sovereignty or territory. Zelenskiy’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.

Reuters reported that Putin may agree to discuss a carve-up of four regions in Ukraine — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — that Russia 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. 

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Russia may also be ready to pull out its forces from small slices of territory it holds in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, according to two of the officials cited in the report.

With Trump set to take office in two months, both sides have been seeking to strengthen their hands ahead of what could be a period of hard negotiations. 

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 US aid to Ukraine, he could also threaten to bolster support to Kyiv to try to pressure Russia into a deal. There are conversations happening in both Kyiv and Moscow to prepare for the shift coming in Washington. 

Russia has intensified its bombing of Ukraine in recent days. The US embassy in Kyiv closed Wednesday due to what it said was “specific information of a potential significant air attack on November 20.” Russia on Sunday launched one of its largest missile and drone strikes since the start of the war, hitting energy infrastructure and other targets across Ukraine.

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 illegally annexed and give up its NATO ambitions before a truce could take effect.

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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 US 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 US authorization on using the missiles to strike inside Russia 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 US 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 strikes deep inside Russia with US-supplied long-range missiles. Moscow on Tuesday said Ukraine used US-made ATACMS to strike Russian territory for the first time.

—With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska, Olesia Safronova and Alberto Nardelli.

(Updates with Kremlin comment, reaction from western officials and background starting from lead)

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