Putin raises the stakes: peace talks stall as Russia presents sweeping demands on Ukraine

Two days of diplomacy — in Oslo and St Petersburg — have produced no breakthrough. Instead, Russia has used the moment to formalize a list of demands so sweeping that analysts say the fighting is set to continue even as both sides keep talking.

In St Petersburg, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff met President Vladimir Putin and relayed what he described as 'new approaches from the Europeans and Kyiv' discussed the previous day in Oslo. Putin's foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov was blunt in his assessment: 'In terms of resolving the Ukraine crisis, there wasn't much there that was useful.'

There is still important work to do.— Steve Witkoff, U.S. Special Envoy

Russia has now presented Ukraine with a formal memorandum setting out its conditions for both a ceasefire and a comprehensive peace treaty. The document offers Ukraine two options for a 30-day ceasefire — neither of which Kyiv or its Western allies regard as acceptable.

The first option demands that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four regions Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — none of which Russia fully controls. The second, described by Moscow as the 'package' proposal, would require Ukraine to halt mobilization, freeze Western arms deliveries, begin demobilizing its military, halt force redeployments, ban the presence of any third-country forces on its soil, end martial law and hold elections — after which the two sides could sign a peace treaty.

Beyond the ceasefire conditions, Russia's memorandum demands the international legal recognition of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 annexations of the four eastern and southern regions. It calls for Ukraine to declare permanent neutrality, abandon its NATO membership bid, limit the size of its armed forces, recognize Russian as an official language alongside Ukrainian, ban what it terms the 'glorification and propaganda of Nazism and neo-Nazism,' and dissolve nationalist groups. Ukraine and its allies have consistently and vehemently rejected the premise behind those last demands, noting that President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.

Russia's document also envisions a future in which both countries lift all sanctions, abandon compensation claims for wartime damage, resume trade and diplomatic ties, and have any final peace treaty endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution — where Russia holds a veto.

Even an unsigned document gives the Kremlin a firmer diplomatic foothold.— Sergei Poletaev, Moscow-based defense analyst

Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center noted that the document reflects Putin's core goal of securing a 'friendly' Ukraine stripped of military ties to the West. She assessed that Moscow knows a Ukrainian withdrawal from all four annexed regions 'is not viable' and is deliberately pushing Kyiv toward the second, 'package' option as the primary course. Even so, she concluded that Russia's maximalist stance means 'the fighting is set to continue, even if bilateral interactions persist.'

Ukraine's own memorandum, submitted before direct talks in Istanbul and shared with its allies, staked out an equally firm counter-position: an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire; no recognition of any Russian territorial gains; the current line of contact as the starting point for negotiations; no restrictions on the size of its armed forces or the presence of foreign troops; international security guarantees; the return of all deported Ukrainian children; and an all-for-all prisoner exchange. It left the door open to gradually lifting some sanctions on Russia if Moscow abides by any agreement.

The mutually exclusive red lines have left the diplomatic picture bleak. The Kremlin says it may be willing to resume trilateral talks with Ukraine and the U.S. next month in Abu Dhabi, but only at the technical level — not the leaders' summit that Oslo had floated. Putin has shown little desire to sit across from Zelensky unless that meeting takes place in Moscow.

Several factors explain why Putin feels little pressure to compromise. Ukraine's air defences are under severe strain. Winter is approaching, and the Kremlin may see the cold as leverage. And the current U.S. administration has, in recent days, paused some sanctions on Moscow, agreed to buy Russian diesel, and directed sharp public criticism at Zelensky — all of which suits Russia and eases pressure on Putin.

Right now Trump is the only leader in the Western world who is doing something for peace.— Evgeny Popov, Russian MP and TV anchor

Meanwhile, some Russian commentators are already looking past the Ukraine talks to a potential meeting between Putin, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in China next month — dubbing it 'The New Yalta,' a reference to the 1945 conference where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt reorganized post-war Europe. For Putin, such a gathering would represent exactly the kind of great-power recognition he has long sought.

I don't know how close we are getting, but things are moving in that direction.— Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy aide

Why it matters — Russia's insistence on rewriting European security arrangements — not just ending the war in Ukraine — means any peace process will require concessions that NATO members have so far ruled out, raising the stakes far beyond Ukraine's borders.

Reported by military.com, globalfinserve.com