By placing conditions to ending the war, the Russian president seems to be stretching the negotiations to bait Trump into maintaining pressure on Kyiv and weakening Europe
Brendan Smialowski / AFP
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and US President Donald Trump in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. Putin told Trump in a phone call on February 12, 2025, that "peaceful negotiations" on ending the Ukraine conflict were possible.
Though US President Donald Trump has mastered the “Art of the Deal”, there are signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use his own mastery of the “Art of No Deal” to fend off efforts to broker a peace agreement in Ukraine. Russia’s goal would be to keep the US engaged, stretch the negotiations, cast Ukraine as the one preventing a deal, bait Trump into maintaining pressure on Ukraine and even weaken Europe.
The Russian response to Trump’s attempt to broker a ceasefire indicates that this may be Moscow’s strategy. Instead of saying “No” to a 30-day ceasefire deal put forth by Ukraine and the US following successful talks in Saudi Arabia, Putin said he could be swayed if “certain conditions” were met.
While this sounds like a reasonable response, the details of those “conditions” suggest the Kremlin is not serious. In a call between President Trump and President Putin, the Russian President reaffirmed his demand that a ceasefire include “the need to stop forced mobilisation in Ukraine and the rearmament of the Ukrainian Armed Forces”. This is in line with prior Russian statements, which suggest that the Kremlin wants the US to suspend the transfer of weapons to Ukraine as well as to pause the training of Ukrainian troops.
The mention of the “need to stop force mobilisation”—a reference to claims Kyiv is “forcing” Ukrainians to join the army—means Russia is also demanding Ukraine itself stop drafting soldiers into its military. This would leave Ukraine more vulnerable to a resumption of hostilities after 30 days and is a non-starter for Kyiv.
The second condition Putin and Russian officials have hinted at is related to the broader framework of a peace agreement between the two countries. To put it simply, Russia wants to make sure the two warring sides share a “common ground” that can serve as a basis for future negotiations—or at least this is how the Kremlin is framing it.
Instead of saying "No" to a 30-day ceasefire deal, Putin says he could be swayed if "certain conditions" are met
This, again, may sound reasonable when one doesn't look at what Russia considers "common ground". Its demands are likely to entail a recognition by Kyiv of the territories annexed by Moscow in Ukraine (and their potential expansions to the border of their respective province) and limits on Ukraine's military. Russia has also repeatedly refused the deployment of any foreign troops as peacekeepers inside Ukraine, suggesting it wants to keep the door open for further attacks.
Past rapprochment bids
President Trump's effort to broker a rapprochement with Russia isn't the first time such a policy was attempted. President Clinton sought to give Russia a voice in NATO through the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997, only to see it wage a destructive war in Chechnya.
For his part, President George W. Bush attempted to improve relations with Moscow by focusing on the fight against terrorism, only to see President Putin stun Western leaders with criticism of what he claimed was a unipolar world and US aggression. And finally, President Obama engaged in a now infamous diplomatic reset that ended with the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.
Détente with Russia is a perilous path—a belief Zelenskyy attempted to communicate in the meeting at the White House, which prompted a furious response from both Trump and his vice president, JD Vance. Zelenskyy knows this too well, as he was himself elected on a platform calling for a renewed effort to engage with Russia, only to see Russia launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The dramatic White House meeting fostered quite a bit of debate as to who bullied whom and whether the meeting was an "ambush" set up to justify coming punitive measures against Ukraine.
The truth is that there is real distance between Washington and Kyiv, which was on display in the Oval Office and even before the infamous verbal altercation. Zelenskyy was there to sign a "minerals deal" that had been drained of any substance by stipulating Ukraine should "reimburse" the US military aid it received. For his part, the Ukrainian leader wanted US security guarantees to uphold any peace deal and make sure Russia doesn't simply resume the war when it suits it.
At the beginning of the meeting, Trump said he was "not worried about security" and seemed to suggest that the mere presence of US companies in Ukraine would serve as a security guarantee. Zelenskyy may have remembered that one of the first things the prior Administration did, ahead of the looming Russian assault, was to pack up the Embassy in Kyiv and leave. But Trump appears unwilling to entertain the idea that Russia shouldn't be implicitly trusted and that Kyiv needs clearer guarantees that Moscow won't resume the war.
Although Ukraine and the US have settled some differences during critical negotiations in Jeddah, the gap between Kyiv and Washington has yet to be completely bridged. The two sides have agreed to kick start the process with a 30-day ceasefire, which would be a first confidence-building measure and serves to gauge whether Russia is interested in a deal to begin with.
But the Trump Administration has continued to signal that it doesn't view security guarantees as key to a future peace agreement. US officials have also continued to convey the message that they trust Putin, with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff saying in an interview he tends to "believe that President Putin is operating in good faith", adding that he "takes him at his word". Though this may be meant to convince Russia to stay engaged, it fails to recognise the lack of real concessions Russia is offering so far.
The art of ANY deal?
This gives the lingering impression that Trump is not looking for a long-lasting agreement. While known for his art of the deal, his current approach is closer to the art of any deal: any piece of paper, any ceasefire, is good enough. The Minsk Agreements, which were signed after Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and failed to prevent the second in 2022, are a testament to the pitfalls of a bad deal. The agreements, negotiated under the gun, did not secure lasting peace and paved the way for renewed Russian aggression.
Even without considering historical precedents, the gap between Ukraine and Russia is too wide to be swiftly bridged, and Moscow has shown no signs it has budged from previous conditions it set for a peace or ceasefire agreement. The negotiations that took place in Istanbul early into the conflict laid out Russia's red lines, which is nothing short of a Ukrainian capitulation.
One of the key takeaways of an analysis published by the Institute for Study of War regarding the Istanbul draft— which largely represented the Russian version of an agreement—is that it would have "left Ukraine helpless in the face of future Russian threats or aggression".
This is because the deal Russia was pushing for effectively neutralised any avenue for security guarantees to Ukraine, putting an end to Ukraine's NATO aspiration, giving Russia veto power on the implementation of security guarantees in case Ukraine was attacked, and even calling to severely shrink its military and security forces while ending Western assistance. By making sure Ukraine would effectively always be under threat, Russia wanted to secure the country's subjugation through diplomacy, just as it failed to do so through force. To no one's surprise—particularly after Ukraine's success in repelling the Russian attempt to capture its capital in March 2022—Kyiv walked away from that deal.
A recent comment by Witkoff, who said the draft could serve as a "guidepost" for future negotiations, likely came as another red flag for Ukraine, especially after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov immediately welcomed the initiative. The US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, later nuanced Witkoff's comment, but Kellogg appears to have been sidelined since then.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) shakes hands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during their meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on February 18, 2025.
Russia's strategy
On the strategic level, all indications are that Russia will insist on neutralising any serious guarantee Ukraine's partners could offer—if one even emerges. When France and Britain explored the possibility of deploying troops, Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov warned that Moscow saw no possible compromise on the issue. Lavrov said that this would mean NATO would no longer be involved in a "hybrid war" against Russia (as Moscow sees it) but in a direct one.
On the tactical level, with regard to a ceasefire, Russia is also adopting a "yes, but" approach. In response to the proposal, Putin has purportedly agreed to suspend attacks on energy infrastructure rather than a broader ceasefire in the skies and sea that would suspend all air attacks.
This is convenient for Russia because as winter comes to an end, Moscow's attacks no longer focus on energy installations but take aim at cities. At the same time, Ukraine has become increasingly efficient when it comes to targeting Russia's energy infrastructure, used to export oil and gas, which has become a real problem for Russia.
This raises the question of whether a deal is possible under these circumstances. In the lead-up to the Minsk agreements, Russian military advances and Ukraine's unpreparedness forced Kyiv into what was essentially a bad deal. Nowadays, Ukraine is in a better position. Russia is slowly advancing but at a pace and cost that simply isn't sustainable.
Yet it appears that the US strategy hinges on recreating the same circumstances that led to the Minsk agreements by withdrawing support for Ukraine. After the suspension of aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz implied that Trump would only reconsider if and when talks are held.
This is another good reason for Russia to drag its feet and stay the course. This "art of no deal" would aim to create the sense that Ukraine is the main obstacle to resolving a conflict that Russia started and would also help convince Trump that he should move forward with lifting sanctions on Russia and normalising ties with Moscow.
European leaders gather at the Palais de l'Élysée in Paris to discuss a coordinated European response to US President Donald Trump's policies toward the continent and the war in Ukraine.
Wider impact
The impact isn't limited to Ukraine but extends to the whole of Europe. As leaders of the old continent have been forcefully awoken from their slumber, they've looked to quickly build up Europe's defence capabilities and offer guarantees to Ukraine to fill the gap left by Washington.
Moscow could argue that, as a result, European leaders have become an obstacle to the deal Trump desires— whether it is a Ukraine peace agreement or a Russia-US reset. In doing so, Russia would look to score a victory that goes beyond Ukraine. It has always been clear that Moscow's gamble in Ukraine was about Europe just as much as Ukraine itself.
Trump and Putin share many similar views when it comes to Europe. They both view the old continent with contempt, as Vance most recently expressed in his Munich speech. Both Putin and Trump have more sympathies for far-right populist parties than other mainstream pro-European parties. Putin calculates that a "Europe of nations and nationalists" (who won't be able to band together) will be easier to outmanoeuvre and bully. Figures around Trump also have an evident affinity for far-right parties, who tend to hold the same worldviews.
Just as worrying for Europe is the fact that both Trump and Putin feel they would be better off if someone else was in charge of Europe's security. Short of agreeing on who this may be they will be fine with a vacuum that leaves Europe as defenseless as Putin dreams Ukraine would be.
