Down Angle Symbol A symbol in the form of an angle pointing downwards. Vladimir Putin has privately expressed interest in a ceasefire on the condition that Russia can keep the territories it has conquered in Ukraine. Contributor/Getty Images
- Russia's war in Ukraine has lasted longer than President Vladimir Putin expected.
- According to the NYT, Putin has been considering a ceasefire since the first weeks of the Russian invasion.
- He renewed this interest, but only on the condition that Russia could keep the conquered territories.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said privately several times since the first weeks of the invasion that he is open to peace talks with Ukraine, the New York Times reported. But some Western officials told the Times they remained skeptical.
One of the earliest incidents came weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which was quickly viewed as a botched military operation as Ukrainian resistance proved more resilient than expected, the Times reported. However, according to the report, talks on a ceasefire failed after Russia's brutal actions against civilians and soldiers in Ukraine.
In the fall of 2022, Putin was reconsidering peace talks after Russian forces withdrew from Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region in September, U.S. officials told the Times. But senior U.S. officials said it was too early for talks and that the ceasefire was conditional on Russia keeping the nearly 20% of occupied Ukrainian territory.
More recently, Putin has shown renewed interest in a ceasefire as the war approaches its two-year mark, and significant progress on the front lines – on both sides – remains to be seen.
Two former senior Russian officials close to the Kremlin, as well as U.S. and international officials who received word of Putin's interest in peace talks, told the Times that the Russian leader has expressed that interest since at least September under the same conditions as last year signaled in the fall.
“He’s really willing to stick with the current positions,” one of the former Russian officials told the Times. “He’s not willing to step back one meter.”
U.S. officials also told the newspaper that the ceasefire would preserve Ukraine as a sovereign country and Kiev as its capital, while Russia would retain control of the occupied territory.
However, it is unclear whether Ukraine would accept a ceasefire under such conditions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly promised to regain all territory seized from Russia, and senior U.S. officials told the Times that they do not see any influential Ukrainian politician agreeing to those terms.
But U.S. and Western officials remain skeptical.
“They never adhered to any agreements,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics told the Times, “and they violated them as soon as they saw fit.”
Putin's quiet interest in peace talks via back-channel communications is clearly at odds with the message the Russian leader is sending to the public.
On December 14, in his first press conference open to Western media since the February invasion, Putin said that Russia's goals remained the same and that there would be no ceasefire until they were achieved.
“There will be peace if we achieve our goals,” Putin said, according to the Associated Press. “The victory will be ours.”
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