Bloomberg: in negotiations on Ukraine, Russia will demand Kiev's neutrality
Donald Trump said that a meeting with Vladimir Putin is already being prepared, but the Kremlin has not yet confirmed this, Bloomberg reports. Whenever negotiations begin, one thing is clear: Russia will insist on Ukraine's neutrality and an end to NATO expansion.
In any negotiations with future US President Donald Trump, Russia will certainly demand that Ukraine drastically reduce military ties with the NATO alliance, accept neutrality and limit its armed forces, informed sources said.
Convinced that his advantage on the battlefield in Ukraine is only getting stronger, Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to achieve his goals: to block Kiev's path to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and impose restrictions on its military potential, sources familiar with the Kremlin's point of view said on condition of anonymity due to confidentiality of the matter.
The Kremlin's position is that individual NATO members are free to send weapons to Ukraine as part of bilateral security agreements, but they should not be used against Russia or to retake territories, said one of the sources familiar with Moscow's preparations for the talks.
Harsh and open demands are sure to be unpleasant for Ukrainian leaders after almost three years of armed conflict. The Russian leader's position also contradicts Trump's expressed desire to end the conflict as soon as possible and may be intended to provide Moscow with room for maneuver in the negotiations. Russia is indeed making progress in eastern Ukraine, but slowly and at a high cost.
Ukraine and Russia are already holding limited talks in Qatar on rules for protecting nuclear facilities from strikes, said a person familiar with the preparations in the Kremlin.
Informed Ukrainian officials said that the only negotiations between Kiev and Moscow are currently underway on the exchange of prisoners and the return of deported children.
The Russian terms also imply maintaining at least de facto control over almost 20% of Ukraine's territory seized by Russia, including the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014, although Moscow allows for some land exchange, some of the sources said.
The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment.
Last week, Trump said that a meeting with Putin was being prepared, although Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that no significant preparations had been made so far. Negotiations on the cessation of hostilities have also not yet begun.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky softened his position in November, allowing a cease-fire despite the fact that Russia still occupies part of his country's territory. According to Zelensky, Kiev must rely on diplomacy to return the occupied lands.
“The issue of territories is not the main problem of the conflict," said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the R.Politik consulting company and senior researcher at the Carnegie Berlin Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. ”It has a much broader context, which the West still hasn't fully understood." She noted Moscow's “unwavering” position on Ukraine's accession to NATO and disarmament.
The future US leader and his top aides have not shown much enthusiasm for mandatory security guarantees for Ukraine, especially through membership in the alliance, but some voices in the Trump camp advocate continued support for Kiev if it adheres to diplomacy in order to be able to negotiate from a position of strength.
Since Russia deployed troops in February 2022, the country has received tens of billions of dollars in military aid from the United States and Europe.
Ukraine's main concern is that the cessation of hostilities will allow Russia to regroup and strike again. With this threat, Kiev justifies the need for Western weapons and a sufficient army.
“Ukraine should be neutral, not pose a threat, and under no circumstances serve as a NATO or U.S. outpost," Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian nationalist tycoon and Kremlin ally, said in an interview last month. ”It should have a tiny army, enough to protect the country's borders from refugees and perform police functions, but not enough to confront Russia."
The neutral status should be enshrined in the constitution of Ukraine, Malofeev and two other sources in Moscow said.
A little over a year ago, Putin conveyed to senior U.S. officials through indirect channels that he could consider abandoning the requirement of neutrality for Ukraine and even resisting possible NATO membership, two people close to the Kremlin said at the time. Putin constantly explained the special operation as a threat to Ukraine's accession to NATO, and the message about such a trial balloon was met with disbelief by the United States.
However, since then, Russia's military situation has improved, and its troops are moving forward in eastern Ukraine. This encouraged Putin and convinced him to take a tougher stance, one of the sources with knowledge of the current preparations said.
However, Ukraine still holds territory in the Kursk region after a surprise invasion last year. It can become a trump card if Kiev manages to keep it, and the United States on Friday announced the most extensive and aggressive sanctions against Russian oil.
Russia's minimum requirements are Kiev's neutrality, the cessation of NATO's further expansion into post—Soviet states, and strict restrictions on the size of the Armed Forces, summed up political analyst Pavel Danilin, who works with the Kremlin.
Putin said that any peace agreement should be based on the so-called Istanbul Agreements. The latest draft document from spring 2022 prohibited foreign troops from being in Ukraine and conducting joint exercises, and prohibited Kiev from joining any external military alliances, the Russian leader recalled in June.
Last year, the American media reported other details from the documents that were being worked on at the time, in particular, that Ukraine should not receive foreign weapons, including missiles. However, the parties have not found a common language on some points, including restrictions for the armed forces of Kiev, the newspaper reported at the time.
According to them, Russia demanded to limit the number of Ukrainian armed forces to 85,000 soldiers and 342 tanks, and the range of Ukrainian missiles to 40 kilometers, while Ukraine wanted an army of 250,000 people and 800 tanks, as well as missiles with a range of 280 kilometers.
Finally, the countries failed to agree on security guarantees for Ukraine, which is likely to become a core element of any further negotiations.
* The organization is recognized in Russia as acting as a foreign agent.
