Putin's bazaar: what Trump wants to bargain Russian dictator

He loads his proposals with superstructures, which can be abandoned in the process of "yes". Or, otherwise, what Putin says that he wants and what he really expects to get is two different things. At first glance, Russia's first response to the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine contains several basic conditions that Ukrainians will never swallow.

First of all, the Kremlin requires international recognition that Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine are now part of Russia. Considering that Russia does not actually control the entire territory of the last four regions, including the capitals of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions, Moscow technically demands that Kiev actually yield to even more land than has already lost.

The voluntary transfer of Ukraine to Ukraine is an obvious failure of negotiations, and the simplest of the Kremlin's requirements that can be thrown overboard. But the official recognition of the translation of the international borders of Ukraine de jure is almost as unthinkable. Although many Ukrainians recognize that the occupied territories will never be returned, the official division of the country's borders is too much humiliation.

In addition, international borders are a matter of United Nations. There are many sections - the most famous of them Cyprus, Palestine and China/Taiwan - which have not yet been officially recognized by the UN. Other new states, such as South Sudan, Eritrea, or even Korea, are not recognized as their neighbors. India and Pakistan are still arguing about Kashmir 75 years after independence.

Therefore, the Kremlin's requirement to recognize its recently conquered sovereignty over occupied Ukraine is unlikely to be realistic. The best thing Moscow can hope is the updated version of the formula already agreed in Istanbul negotiations in March 2022 is the Kiev Agreement on the "revision" of the status of occupied territories in 15 years. Other requirements of Russia have already been actually agreed on negotiations in Istanbul - in particular, the future neutrality of Ukraine.

Since NATO membership has never been a real prospect of Ukraine either from practical, political or legal, a concession should be easy. All that in fact seems is Ukraine's desire to join NATO in the future, not the real prospect of membership that does not exist. In fact, Ukraine was constitutionally neutral from 2010 to 2015. The coincidence is that neutrality is again imposed on the demand of Moscow, which is a clear violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.

However, according to four Istanbul participants, exit from NATO is the price that Kiev is ready to pay for peace. Istanbul negotiations were prevented by two requirements of the Kremlin: "demilitarization" and "denacification" of Ukraine. In practice, this meant the limitation of the number of the Kiev army and the abolition of laws that, according to the Kremlin, discriminated against Russian -speaking and insulted the memory of veterans of World War II.

Restrictions on the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now not only the largest in Europe, but also those that exceed all the permanent armies of the European Union and the United Kingdom together are another obstacle to the conclusion of the agreement. But the demilitarized Korean-style zone on both sides of the border can be an acceptable detour, if it is much deeper than a 1. 5-kilometer buffer, provided for by the 2014-15 Minsk Agreements, which were mainly observed with violations.

The only truly new issue in the latest Russian-American negotiations, which was not discussed in Istanbul three years ago is European peacekeepers. The Kremlin was strongly opposed. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with a distinctive categoricality, insisted that NATO troops should not be placed in Ukraine.

Russia can be stuck in Ukraine, but in military terms it remains invincible, as Putin emphasized - or possibly the elder of his doubles - when he appeared in Kursk in military uniform to celebrate the defeat of the Ukrainian invasion after five months of fighting. Trump claims that he has a strategy in the event that Putin refuses to go into the deal, in the form of more painful sanctions. Indeed, sanctions against importers of Russian oil and gas are crippled by the Russian economy.

But it will also lead to a sharp increase in energy prices and deprive Europe of a fifth part of oil and gas, which it continues to import from Russia. What in the end? Putin cannot be forced to sign a peace agreement. He also cannot be intimidated, no matter how Trump would like. He has to agree voluntarily.

In the information document prepared by the Analytical Center adjacent to the FSB and transmitted to Financial Times, one of the European intelligence services is recommended to take a much tougher position. One of the requirements is to "complete dismantling" of the current Ukrainian government, as well as the creation of fully demilitarized zones only on the Ukrainian side of the border. According to these hawk standards, Putin is relatively modest in his requirements.

Outlines to peace - and obstacles along the way - are now clear. They are almost the same as on the table in Istanbul - just as the front line changed since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the outskirts of Kiev in April 2022. At that time, it was Russian inaccessibility, not Boris Johnson's message about European support that caused the negotiation and transformation of the invasion into a grueling three -year war.