The ball is now in Russia’s court for the proposed ceasefire to start in Ukraine next Tuesday, according to the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. This is the first major breakthrough in peace talks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over a thousand days ago – in which at least half a million Russians and Ukrainians have died, at least the same number seriously injured, and nearly 20 times the number displaced.
Russia has yet to state terms for a peace deal – and so far has not addressed the Ukrainian proposal for a 30-day cessation of hostilities, tabled in Jeddah this Tuesday, in any specific detail. The official spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry in Moscow has muttered gnomically about “not heeding discussions in foreign lands”.
Donald Trump has said that it is now down to what he can agree with Vladimir Putin. “I think the ceasefire is very important,” was his first reaction. “If we can get Russia to do it, that’ll be great. If we can’t, we just keep going on, and people are gonna get killed – lots of people.”
Never a truer word, perhaps. Furthermore, as if to dispel charges that he had been too soft on the Putin camp, Trump has ordered the immediate resumption of military support to Ukraine, and more importantly the delivery of American real-time battlefield intelligence.
It’s fingers crossed for the guns and rockets falling silent
So, it’s fingers crossed for the guns and rockets falling silent across the thousand kilometre battlefront by the middle of next week.
Much depends on the terms the Kremlin team put on the negotiating table. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has reiterated just this week that nothing has changed since February 2022. Moscow is looking for capitulation from Kyiv, the ceding of territory already seized, and quite a bit more, to become part of metropolitan Russia. These include the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and some control of access to the Black Sea from the port complex at Odesa.
There should be a guarantee of neutrality, with no application to join Nato or the EU in the foreseeable future. Sovereign Ukraine would be a cipher, and it would fall into the Moscow sphere of influence along with Belarus and Georgia.
Here there is a strange clarity and consistency to Putin’s plans and vision for Russia and Russia’ paramount role in a wider Eurasian geopolitical region. The influence and posturing of the Nato allies would be diminished.
This view is the core of what any long-term negotiation for peace across the region will have to grasp. It goes well beyond the issue of Ukraine itself.
The story begins in the 1990s, before Putin ascends to power at the turn of the century. In 1994 newly independent Ukraine agreed to give up its large, but largely useless, nuclear arsenal for guarantees of sovereignty, witnessed by Russia, the US and Britain in an agreement at Budapest. The sovereignty was explicit, but implicit in the deal, according to the Moscow narrative, is that Nato would not extend its membership further east. The three Baltic states became full members in 2004, and Finland and Sweden joined in 2023.
In February 2007 Vladimir Putin gave one of the most important speeches of his career
Arrangements for a regular Russian dialogue with Nato members through the Russia – Nato council and representation at Nato HQ in Brussels slowly weakened. Looking back, it is surprising that no major western government, US or European, saw resetting engagement with Russia as a major priority.
In February 2007, Vladimir Putin, now well established as Russian president, gave one of the most important speeches of his career. The setting was the Munich Security Conference, setting this February for the bizarre anti-European rant from Vice President JD Vance.
Putin’s speech needs studying in detail by any peace negotiating team today. In it he spoke of the need for cooperation – and the success of arms control arrangements such as the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty – the INF. But he also warned that that Nato was abusing its position and moving east across Europe. Furthermore, western nations were pursuing “vulgar interests” in multinational organisations, the UN agencies and the OSCE. This contained a veiled warning that Russia, too, would have to look after its interests with force.
The following year, in April 2008, and as if the Munich speech hadn’t happened, the Nato summit at Bucharest agreed that Ukraine and Georgia should be considered for Nato membership at a time and place unspecified. This was endorsed publicly by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Foreign Secretary David Miliband, again in vague terms.
Two and a half months later, the border war began between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia. The dispute is still unresolved.
This is the almost mystical view Putin has of the great Russian role and destiny at the heart of Europe
In Ukraine open hostilities began in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and a rumbling border conflict in Donbas. In July 2021 Vladimir Putin issued a 7,000 word essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. With the Munich speech of 2007, it is another key text. “I would like to emphasise,” he writes, “that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, is to my mind our greatest misfortune and tragedy.”
This is the “almost mystical” view – in the words of Chancellor Angela Merkel – Putin has of the great Russian role and destiny at the heart of Europe. This implies a diminishing role for Nato, and to a less extent the EU. There will be no durable peace in eastern Europe unless this can be resolved between Moscow, Kyiv, Brussels and Washington.
Meanwhile, the war grinds on – with both sides desperate for an operational pause, a ceasefire that has half a chance of becoming permanent. Ukraine is a vital part of the story, but beyond there is the whole, and bizarrely, consistent Putin mindset.
In the latest flurry of diplomacy, one man, Keir Starmer’s chief adviser Jonathan Powell, has proved remarkably adroit, largely by talking quietly and empathetically to all sides. He has made sense at last of the office of National Security Adviser as inaugurated by David Cameron 15 years ago. His track record in diplomacy is proven in delivering the Good Friday Agreement to bring peace in Northern Ireland under Tony Blair.
Now he has the challenge of playing diplomatic poker with Putin’s team and proving to that it’s a game both sides can win.
Robert Fox is defence editor
