Domestically, Putin could sell a cease-fire deal that saw Russia hold onto most of the territory of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson as a victory that ensured the defense of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and safeguarded the landbridge to Crimea, according to one of the sources.
Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine cease-fire deal with Donald Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking told Reuters.
Security Guarantees, Army Limits While Russia will not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, or the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil, it is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv, according to the five current and former officials.
"Why? Because this would mean that Ukraine will be constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation." Two of the sources said outgoing President Joe Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to fire American ATACMS missiles deep into Russia could complicate and delay any settlement – and stiffen Moscow's demands as hardliners push for a bigger chunk of Ukraine.
Putin set out his opening terms June 14 for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who watched the Soviet Union crumble while stationed in Dresden, took the decision to invade Ukraine himself with only limited counsel from a tiny group of trusted advisers, 10 Russian sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking told Reuters.
The Kremlin chief presents what he calls the "special military operation" in Ukraine as a watershed moment when Moscow finally stood up to what he sees as the arrogance of the West which enlarged NATO eastwards towards Russia's borders and meddled in the politics of what Moscow considers as its own backyard, including Georgia and, crucially, Ukraine.
"A grand bargain, in my view, would be very difficult to reach as the positions of the two sides are very far apart." 'Harsh Truth: Russia Is Winning' Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, a peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80% of the Donbas – the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Trump's communications director Steven Cheung told Reuters about the incoming U.S. president: "He is the only person who can bring both sides together in order to negotiate peace, and work towards ending the war and stopping the killing." Real estate billionaire Trump, author of the 1987 book "Trump: the Art of the Deal," has said he would speak directly to Putin in his efforts to forge a peace deal, though has given no details on how he might reconcile the warring sides, which both show scant sign of backing down.
Russia might also be open to withdrawing from the relatively small patches of territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in the north and south of Ukraine, two of the officials said.
While Moscow claims the four regions as wholly part of Russia, defended by the country's nuclear umbrella, its forces on the ground control 70-80% of the territory with about 26,000 square km still held by Ukrainian troops, open-source data on the front line shows.
In the first detailed reporting of what President Putin would accept in any deal brokered by Trump, the five current and former Russian officials said the Kremlin could broadly agree to freeze the conflict along the front lines.
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/ukraine-war-russia/2024/11/20/id/1188753/
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