Earlier today the Russian news outlet Kommersant reported on U.S.-Russian negotiations in Turkey (machine translation):
As it became known to "Kommersant", today, November 14, negotiations between the Russian and American delegations are taking place in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin flew to Ankara from the Russian side.
This meeting has not been publicly announced before. The source has so far declined to provide details of the talks.
Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that he could neither confirm nor deny the information about the talks in Ankara.
The last time the Russian and American delegations met in Geneva was on January 10 for talks on security guarantees. The lack of practical results of the January negotiation process is often seen as a diplomatic prerequisite for the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine.
The U.S. counterpart of Sergei Naryshkin is CIA director Bill Burns.
The negotiations have long been requested by Russia:
In the last month, the volley of calls for negotiation from Putin has intensified. On September 30, Putin called on Kiev “to return back to the negotiating table.” On October 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia "was willing to engage with the United States or with Turkey on ways to end the war." Two days later, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow is “open to negotiations to achieve our objectives." On October 26, Putin sent a message to Zelensky through President Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo of Guinea Bissau, saying that “He wishes and thinks that a direct dialogue should happen between your two countries.” On October 30, Lavrov said that Russia is “ready to listen to our Western colleagues if they make another request to organize a conversation" as long as Russia’s security needs were considered. And on November 1, Putin said that “necessary conditions” could arise that would be a catalyst to talks.
On the U.S. side only one voice had recently publicly urged to start negotiations:
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to US officials, Milley “has made the case in internal meetings that the Ukrainians have achieved about as much as they could reasonably expect on the battlefield before winter sets in and so they should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table.”
The top US general has made no secret of his stance. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley declared in a public speech this week.
At the end of last week the Wall Street Journal reported that more members of the Biden administration agreed with that position:
As Ukraine Retakes Kherson, U.S. Looks to Diplomacy Before Winter Slows Momentum
American arms are flowing, but officials in Washington question how much territory either side can win Ukrainian cities including Kyiv have turned off streetlights to conserve energy after Russian attacks on power plants.
Senior U.S. officials have begun nudging Kyiv to start thinking about peace talks in the event winter stalls its momentum, following Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson in one of its most stunning triumphs of the war.
The imminent onset of winter—coupled with fears of inflation spurred by mounting energy and food prices, the billions of dollars of weaponry already pumped into Ukraine, and the tens of thousands of casualties on both sides—has prompted talk in Washington of a potential inflection point in the war, now in its ninth month.
Fact is that the 'west' is running short of ammunition it can deliver to Ukraine. That is why the U.S. is buying 100,000 rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition from South Korea:
“Negotiations are ongoing between the US and Korean companies to export ammunition, in order to make up for the shortage of 155mm ammunition inventories in the US,” the ministry said. The Pentagon said in a statement it has been “in discussion” about “potential sales” of ammunition by the US from South Korea.
But statements from South Korea and the US make clear that the deal, which has been in the works for months, has not yet been finalized. The purchase of such a large supply of artillery ammunition is highly sensitive for South Korea, especially given the recent missile launches and weapon tests conducted by North Korea.
To call 100,000 artillery rounds a 'large supply' is a joke. It is less than what the Russian army expenses in two days.
The 'west' currently no longer has the industrial capacity to make the products that are needed in a long high intensity war. It could rebuild that capacity but that would require a huge amount of money and long term commitments to buy significant amounts of such products.
Without a steady resupply of huge amounts of ammunition the Ukrainian army is done.
The Biden administration has now confirmed that CIA head Burns has met with Naryshkin. But it is lying about the content of the talks:
William J. Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, met with his Russian counterpart in Turkey on Monday to warn Russia against the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, a White House spokesman said.
The National Security Council said Mr. Burns’s meeting in Ankara was not in any way meant to negotiate or to discuss any settlement of the war in Ukraine. Ukraine was briefed in advance on the trip, the spokesman said.
President Biden has insisted that Ukraine, and not the United States, will dictate if and when negotiations commence to end the war.
Russia has not threatened to use nuclear weapons. There is no reason for it to do so and many good reason to refrain from using them. It would foremost alienate China and other Russian allies. It was in fact the U.S. which planted nuclear scare stories in another of its attempts to smear Russia. The U.S. of course knows that there is no danger that Russia would use nukes and it is likely that Burns did not even mention them.
There are enough other problems. The electricity situation in Ukraine is getting worse as the weather gets colder. Some 40% to 50% of the 330 kilovolt network is down and more of it will fail.
What the U.S. needs is more time for Ukraine to repair damage and for the production and delivery of more weapons and ammunition. It needs a pause in the war. It may well hope for a kind of ceasefire during the winter. It is highly likely that Burns went to Ankara to talk about that.
Sure, the Biden administration has no interest in ending the war. It is setting up a headquarter in Germany where a three star general and his headquarter staff will direct the U.S. efforts in its, for now, proxy war against Russia. The claim is that the new command will be responsible for supplying Ukraine. That is unlikely to be true:
The Pentagon puts a 3 Stars General in Charge of War Operations — not Inventory. And you do not need a Headquarters Staff of 300 to do an Audit. It’s a War Headquarters Staff. We are going to war against Russia unless the American People can figure out some way to stop it!
The headquarter means that the U.S. is planing for a very long and bigger war.
NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has said that a Russian victory in the conflict in Ukraine would be a defeat for NATO and that it can not allow such an outcome.
If you can not allow something to happen that is already mostly assured you will have to do something very serious to prevent that outcome. NATO is not united enough to go to war. But the chances for a direct conflict are growing by the day. It will be left to U.S. and some east European countries to send their own troops into Ukraine.
The U.S. public is not yet ready for such a step and it will take more time to get to that point.
It is another reason why the U.S. would like to pause the war for now. But Russia is unlikely to fall for such a scam. A ceasefire would allow the Ukrainian military to regain some strength and to build up more defensive lines.
After its mobilization of reservists in September Russia will soon have the forces available that are necessary to breach the Ukrainian front lines to then storm through and attack deep behind those lines. As soon as the ground freezes it will be ready to go. Any pause now would make a later move more difficult.
There will be no ceasefire now but the talks are good anyway. Both sides should do there best to keep them going.
Russia has asked for a lot: a pullback of NATO to its 1997 position, four parts of Ukraine to become parts of Russia, a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO. The U.S. is certainly not willing to commit to those steps – at least not yet.
It will need time and many more talks for the U.S. to come to its senses and to make the necessary concessions to end the conflict.
It will also require the defeat of the Ukrainian military, and anyone who joins it, on the battle field. Russia can do that if it concentrates on that effort.