The details of the ceasefire negotiations between the U.S., Europe and Ukraine continue to make headlines despite being largely irrelevant for an end of the conflict in Ukraine.
In an interview with Brazilian paper O Globo (in Portuguese) Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again repeated the Russian demands for peace in Ukraine.
It requires:
- an end of Ukraine's ban on negotiations with Russia,
- for Ukraine to go back to the status of a neutral and non-aligned country in accordance with the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in the 1990's,
- an end of the policies of legally and physically destroy everything Russian: the language, media, culture, traditions, and Russian orthodoxy
- the international recognition of Russia's ownership of Crimea, the DPR, LPR and the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions.
There must also be measures to legal fix those positions, to make them permanent and to have enforcement mechanisms.
Also required is, says Lavrov, (edited machine translation):
.. a schedule for the task of de-and desnazifiction in Ukraine, and the lifting of the sanctions, actions, lawsuits and arrest warrants, and the transfer of assets to Russia which are 'frozen' in the West. Also, we will look for reliable warranties for the security of the Russian Federation, and against the threats created by the hostile activity of Nato, the European Union and its individual member states on the country's borders in the west.
There is then no change in the Russian position since its President Vladimir Putin explained it at length on June 14 2024.
Meanwhile the U.S. is very publicly negotiating with Ukraine and Europe about some ceasefire conditions along the lines the pro-Ukrainian (and neo-conservative?) General Kellogg has long promoted (also here):
Kellogg’s implicit assumptions were that Russia is highly vulnerable to a sanctions threat (its economy perceived as being fragile); that it had suffered unsustainably high casualties; and that the war was at a stalemate.
Thus, Kellogg persuaded Trump that Russia would readily agree to the ceasefire terms proposed – albeit terms that were constructed around patently flawed underlying assumptions about Russia and its presumed weaknesses.
…
All of Kellogg’s underlying assumptions lacked any basis in reality. Yet Trump seemingly took them on trust. And despite Steve Witkoff’s subsequent three lengthy personal meetings with President Putin, in which Putin repeatedly stated that he would not accept any ceasefire until a political framework had been first agreed, the Kellogg contingent continued to blandly assume that Russia would be forced to accept Kellogg’s détente because of the claimed serious ‘setbacks’ Russia had suffered in Ukraine.Given this history, unsurprisingly, the ceasefire framework terms outlined by Rubio this week in Paris reflected those more suited to a party at the point of capitulation, rather than that of a state anticipating achieving its objectives – by military means.
In essence, the Kellogg Plan looked to bring a U.S. ‘win’ on terms aligned to a desire to keep open the option for continuing attritional war on Russia.
In his O Globo interview Lavrov again made it known that Russia can not and will not commit to a temporary freeze of the conflict without having a clear path towards the larger peace agreement.
In sight of this it is funny how Russia has managed to hand the tar-baby of blocking a ceasefire to the (former) Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski.
Despite U.S. pressure for a fast deal Russia does not expect any quick resolution of the conflict. It just announced a new unilateral ceasefire from May 8 to May 10, i.e. around the 80th anniversary of its victory in World War II on May 9.
It is another public sign that Russia is willing to adhere to a ceasefire agreement IF the conditions are right.
Trump still tries to behave like a neutral mediator in a conflict between Kiev and Moscow. He wants to impose a peace deal that projects his personal 'greatness'.
But the U.S. has been and continues to be the main party of the war with Russia while Ukraine is the mere proxy force that does the bleeding. Trump can not impose a fast solution to end the war because he still can not accept that he is a main party in it.
Russia is winning the war. A solution can only be found when the U.S. is ready to (silently) accept its defeat.
Trump can still end the war and declare it a "win". But only if he agrees to the conditions that Russia has laid out for him.