Putin open to ceasefire talks with Trump but with strict terms

Donald Trump is returning to the White House, having previously claimed multiple times that he would be able to end the war in Ukraine very quickly. As Reuters points out, Moscow currently controls a part of Ukraine comparable in size to New Brunswick and is advancing at the fastest pace since the start of the invasion.

Sources connected to the Kremlin informed Reuters that the Russian leader is ready to discuss a ceasefire in Ukraine with Donald Trump. According to their statements, Putin, however, demands that Kyiv abandon ambitions related to joining NATO and exclude any significant territorial concessions.

Russian officials, requesting anonymity, conveyed that the Kremlin might agree to freeze the conflict along the front line. There seems to be a negotiation room regarding the precise division of the four eastern regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Earlier, in September 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the illegal annexation—officially incorporating the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, into Russia, citing a conducted referendum.

Two officials also claim that Russia may be open to withdrawing from relatively small patches of territory in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions in the north and south of Ukraine.

The agency's sources emphasized that Joe Biden's administration's decision to give Ukraine the green light to strike deep into Russia could complicate and delay any agreement. If no agreement on a ceasefire is reached, Russia will continue to fight.

"Putin has already said that freezing the conflict will not work in any way," a Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, informed the agency earlier. "And the missile authorisation is a very dangerous escalation on the part of the United States."