‘Putin ready for ceasefire based on current frontlines in Ukraine’
Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond. Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to rule out talks. “Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire — to freeze the war,” said another of the four, a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top level conversations in the Kremlin. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in response to a request for comment, said the Kremlin chief had repeatedly made clear Russia was open to dialogue to achieve its goals, saying the country did not want “eternal war”.
The appointment last week of economist Andrei Belousov as Russia’s defence minister was seen by some Western military and political analysts as placing the Russian economy on a permanent war footing in order to win a protracted conflict.
It followed sustained battlefield pressure and territorial advances by Russia in recent weeks.
However, the sources said that Putin, re-elected in March for a new six-year term, would rather use Russia’s current momentum to put the war behind him.
Based on their knowledge of conversations in the upper ranks of the Kremlin, two of the sources said Putin was of the view that gains in the war so far were enough to sell a victory to the Russian people.
Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War II has cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides and led to sweeping Western sanctions on Russia’s economy.
Putin’s insistence on locking in any battlefield gains in a deal is non-negotiable, all of the sources suggested.
Freezing the conflict along current lines would leave Russia in possession of substantial chunks of four Ukrainian regions he formally incorporated into Russia in September 2022, but without full control of any of them. Such an arrangement would fall short of the goals Moscow set for itself at the time, when it said the four of Ukraine’s regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — now belonged to it in their entirety.