Reuters, citing five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking, reports that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Donald Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
U.S. President-elect Trump, who has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, is returning to the White House at a time of Russian ascendancy, Reuters says, noting that Moscow controls a chunk of Ukraine about the size of the American state of Virginia and is advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.
In the first detailed reporting of what President Putin would accept in any deal brokered by Trump, the five current and former Russian officials reportedly said the Kremlin could broadly agree to freeze the conflict along the front lines.
Reuters notes that according to three of the people who all requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, there may be room for negotiation over the precise carve-up of the four eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson,
Reuters says open-source data on the front line shows Russia’s forces on the ground control 70-80% of the territory with about 26,000 square kilometers still held by Ukrainian troops,.
In total, Russia reportedly has over 110,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, while Ukraine holds about 650 square kilometers of Russia's Kursk oblast.
According to those five current and former officials, Russia will not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, or the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil.
One of the officials, a senior source with knowledge of top-level Kremlin discussions, said the West would have to accept the "harsh truth" that all the support it had given Ukraine could not prevent Russia from winning the war.
When asked what a possible cease-fire might look like, two of the Russian sources referred to a draft agreement that was almost approved in April 2022 after talks in Istanbul, and which Putin has referred to in public as a possible basis for a deal.
Under that draft, a copy of which Reuters has seen, Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
One of the Russian officials said there would be no agreement unless Ukraine received security guarantees, adding: "The question is how to avoid a deal that locks the West into a possible direct confrontation with Russia one day."
Moscow yesterday rejected speculation about a potential freezing of the war in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing that Russian President Vladimir Putin "has already said that freezing this conflict is not an option."
Peskov said that while Putin has repeatedly conveyed his willingness to engage in talks, Moscow still wants to achieve its war aims.
The comments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday suggested in a speech to parliament that temporary Russian control over Ukrainian territory may be inevitable while Putin remains in power.
Speculation has circulated in international media that the war in Ukraine could be frozen along the front lines without Kiev legally ceding territory to Russia.
