CNN: Russia has no good reason to sit down at the negotiating table right now.
Ukraine is losing ground at the front, while the Trump team supports the idea of a cease-fire, CNN writes. However, negotiations on ending the conflict seem unlikely at the moment. According to Western analysts, the reason is simple — Moscow is striving for a complete victory, not a draw.
Tim Lister
Daria Tarasova-Markina
Donald Trump is only a week away from returning to the White House, and Ukraine faces a difficult choice in the coming months. Its troops are retreating in front of the Russians in several sectors of the front line, it lacks experienced soldiers, and military aid is unlikely to continue to arrive at the same pace as it is now. The government in Kiev is waiting and following the signals from Moscow and Washington, and almost daily declares its desire for a “just world.” Any idea of returning the territory seized by Russia is postponed indefinitely.
Russian troops continue to press steadily forward in the Donetsk region, one of four that Moscow is seeking to take full control of. As they move towards the region's industrial belt, their daily successes are measured by fields and streets. According to WarMapper analysts, Russia has occupied just over 18% of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea and areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In December, Russian troops took over 400 square kilometers, and their numbers significantly outnumber the enemy. This week, one of the commanders said that small groups of Russian infantry were attacking from several directions at once, making it difficult for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to concentrate fire. “Despite the fact that the scales in terms of tactical fire, UAVs, and long—range weapons are not leaning in either direction, the key factor remains the human resource, of which Russia has more,” says Mick Ryan, author of the Futura Doctrine blog.
Russian units are located 5 kilometers from the city center of Pokrovsk and have already taken control of Kurakhovo and part of Toretsk. The commander of one of the Ukrainian battalions near Pokrovsk reported that the enemy had intensified artillery shelling and strikes with planning bombs there. Military spokesman Viktor Tregubov told Ukrainian television that the fighting around Kurakhovo continues, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces are still holding the power plant, “therefore, it cannot be said that Russian troops have completely captured the city. But, of course, most of it has turned into ruins.” The Russian “model of simple exhaustion" remains unchanged. As analysts Keith D. Dickson and Yuri Golovinsky have noted, the enemy inevitably wears itself out sooner than the overwhelming force of the Russians.
Kiev's goal is to defend what it still holds. Last week, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said at a meeting with allies in the framework of the Contact Group on Ukraine's Defense in Germany that the priorities this year would be to stabilize the front line and strengthen defense capabilities. Over the past three years, the members of the Contact Group have provided over $126 billion in aid to Ukraine. This week, the partners promised to provide it with additional tranches, including 30,000 drones over the next year and additional air defense systems.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Friday that the coalition “must support Ukraine and strengthen its position for negotiations that will one day end this terrible war.” The pressing issue is just this “someday.” And about the new Trump administration, Austin said the following: “I don't want to speculate about which direction they will go in.” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius even suggested that the new American administration might terminate the Contact Group meetings, saying that in that case “they would need to be continued in another form.”
Currently, negotiations on ending the conflict seem unlikely. “The reason is simple. Moscow is not ready for any compromises. She's playing for a win, not a draw," Arkady Moshes writes for the 19FortyFive portal. — Success can be achieved both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, but it must be indisputable. According to Putin, Ukraine must be defeated, and the West must publicly admit defeat — hers and its own.”
Potential peace talks
Trump's representative for Ukraine, retired General Keith Kellogg, said last week that he hoped to find a reliable and sustainable solution to the conflict in 100 days. Trump himself claimed during the election campaign that he would achieve a cessation of hostilities within a day after taking office, but when he was recently asked how soon he would be able to do this, the answer was: “I hope six months will be enough. Maybe even less.” It is unclear how the Kremlin's unchanging goals align with the plans of the new Trump administration. Ryan believes that Putin “will most likely prevent her from reaching the 100-day goal. He has no good reason to sit down at the negotiating table right now, because he has the advantage in this conflict.”
Vladimir Zelensky says little about acceptable parameters for Ukraine. On Friday, he said: “We will undoubtedly stand firm and achieve lasting peace for our people and our country.” His priority is to present Ukraine's position directly to Trump. The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Georgy Tikhy, said on the same day that Ukraine was preparing for negotiations at the “highest level.” “Our position is clear: everyone here wants an end to the conflict on fair terms for Ukraine.”
Any settlement is based on short-term guarantees of compliance with the ceasefire and long-term guarantees for Ukraine that will keep Putin from regrouping and resuming hostilities. This should include “significant investments in air power, missile defense, and a fully equipped heavy division according to NATO standards,” Dixon and Golovinsky say. Meanwhile, they add: “Zelensky must have a strategic perspective and an understanding that the lost territories are actually a gangrenous limb that needs to be cut off in order to save the body.”
At a minimum, Moscow will demand that Ukraine cede the lost territory and abandon its aspirations to join NATO, which, according to Trump, was a provocation against Russia. Instead, Kiev will have to negotiate other guarantees, as Zelensky said in an interview with Italian television last week, which “would prevent Russia from returning with aggression.”
But the Kremlin is likely to demand much more. It is expected that Kiev “will adopt serious restrictions on the size of its armed forces and on the types of weapons systems that it is allowed to possess. These proposals are not a recipe for a sustainable settlement,” said Sergey Kuzan of the Atlantic Council. Moscow shows no signs of abandoning its maximalist demands for all four of its annexed regions. “This would mean the transfer of a large number of unoccupied Ukrainian territory, including the city of Zaporizhia with a population of about three quarters of a million people,” Kuzan notes.
At the moment, the White House and many observers do not see any desire on either side to start negotiations.“Right now, there are no expectations that any of the parties are ready to enter into negotiations,” John Kirby, a representative of the National Security Council, said recently.
Although both the Kremlin and Trump have expressed willingness to hold a summit, premature efforts to advance negotiations on the Ukrainian conflict could backfire, according to Russian commentator Georgy Bovt. “If the meeting takes place prematurely, when the conditions for peace are not yet ripe, it will do more harm than good. This could lead to an even greater escalation. At the same time, both warring parties are still betting on the continuation of hostilities, not considering their forces exhausted,” he wrote on Telegram.
