Putin can’t end the war in Ukraine without Russia collapsing
Russian President Vladimir Putin has quietly expressed openness to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with US President-elect Donald Trump. Putin’s purported position was divulged to Reuters by five Kremlin insiders and added ammunition to Trump’s plans to freeze the Ukraine War at the start of his presidency.
These are promising signs for Trump’s agenda, but is Russia ready to negotiate? The Kremlin’s rhetoric suggests that the answer to this question is an emphatic no. On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared that Putin “has repeatedly said that any option of freezing the conflict won’t work for us.”
Russia also rejected Turkey’s peace plan for Ukraine. This proposal called for a freeze of current battlelines, no Ukrainian Nato accession for at least ten years and the deployment of international troops to a demilitarised borderline in eastern Ukraine. These terms closely mirror the peace plan that Trump will outline to Putin.
Unless the US accedes to Putin’s maximalist vision, which includes occupying Ukrainian-held areas of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Donetsk and permanently ruling out Ukraine’s Nato membership, Russia’s short-term calculus on negotiations is unlikely to change.
And it is equally improbable that Trump will accede to Putin’s far-fetched demands. Even the Russia-friendly Chinese and Brazilian peace plans do not go beyond freezing the conflict at current borders. Abandoning Nato’s open-door policy under Russian pressure would deal a long-term blow to its credibility as an alliance bloc.
While Russia is unlikely to negotiate in good faith, it still sees tactical value in diplomacy. As Russian fighter jets and Wagner Group mercenaries aided Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal reconquest of Aleppo, Russia participated actively in the Astana Peace Process. While Russian forces perpetrated the Bucha Massacre, Putin’s chief diplomats toyed with the idea of ending the Ukraine War at the March 2022 Istanbul talks.
Putin’s phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and openness to ceasefire talks with Trump are the latest manifestation of this playbook. For the Kremlin, diplomacy is a tool of psychological warfare and a stalling tactic that facilities military breakthroughs.
Once negotiations begin, Russia will almost certainly cite Ukraine’s use of ATACM long-range missiles on its territory and occupation of Kursk as irrevocable sticking points. Russia wants Ukraine to make unilateral concessions on both fronts.
To stop Ukrainian ATACM attacks, Russia could play to the sensibilities of Trump and his inner circle. As national security advisor Mike Waltz has highlighted escalation risks associated with Ukraine’s ATACM use and Trump warns regularly about World War III, Russia will ratchet up its nuclear brinkmanship.
Prominent Russian commentators like former Kremlin advisor Sergey Markov argue that Biden approved Ukraine’s use of ATACMs to sabotage Trump’s presidency. Russian diplomats will use negotiations to convey this narrative to Trump, as it plays into the President-elect’s mistrust of the US foreign policy establishment.
On Kursk, Russia will have more difficulty achieving its preferred outcome. Ukraine is determined to hold onto territory in Kursk, as it wants to secure a land swap deal for Russian-occupied parts of Kharkiv or the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Russia will likely continue its war of attrition in Kursk as negotiations commence.
Even if these issues are resolved, Russian obstructionism is unlikely to end. Putin sees the war’s continuation as vital for regime stability in Russia. The military-industrial boom continues to prevent socioeconomic unrest. Led by fascist philosopher Alexander Dugin, many Russian ultranationalists see Putin’s acquiescence to the 2015 Minsk II Accords with Ukraine as a naïve act of betrayal.
By authorising a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin struck a Faustian bargain with Russian ultranationalists. The June 2023 Wagner Group mutiny underscored the threat of ultranationalist dissent and Putin sees continued war as the ideal way to appease this militarised faction.
The most effective way to change Putin’s calculus is to further steepen the costs of Russian aggression. Tighter sanctions could eventually pop Russia’s wartime economic bubble and degrade its military supply chains. Long-range Ukrainian strikes could disrupt Russian energy production and thwart the entry of more North Korean forces onto the frontlines. Facing a sagging economy and diminishing returns on the battlefield, Putin could be compelled to negotiate in a serious way.
Russia is determined to outlast the West’s support for Ukraine and sees diplomacy as a tactic to achieve that goal. When negotiating with Putin, Trump must remain attuned to this reality.