Donald Trump's government signaled to the Kremlin that it will expand concessions to Vladimir Putin in exchange for a negotiation that could put an end to the War in Ukraine, started by the Russian in February 2022.
In messages that reached the Kremlin after negotiator Kirill Dmitriev's visit to Trump, last Thursday (5), the American is even willing to resume the terms that Putin had imposed in an ultimatum to the West at the end of 2021, which was ignored.
According to that proposal, in addition to the territorial loss of four Ukrainian regions and the confirmation of Kiev's neutrality, without support from NATO, Putin would also gain some form of withdrawal of offensive forces from the military alliance led by the US from Eastern Europe — in this case, the Baltic States.
In return, the Kremlin made it known that it is willing to reach a ceasefire even before a definitive peace treaty, which could occur as early as the European spring, at the end of March 2027.
Until now, Russia had only said it would agree to a final truce under its conditions. But the pause in fighting around the besieged city of Olechki, promoted by First Lady Melania Trump, has been cited as an example that can be expanded upon.
The scenario precedes the resumption of direct negotiations between Russians and Ukrainians, mediated by the United States in Abu Dhabi. They are scheduled for this Tuesday (10) and Wednesday (11), and this Sunday (8) France said that there should be some type of European participation.
The exchanges of signals were reported to Folha by four people with knowledge of the matter in Moscow, one of them linked to the negotiating team going to the Arab emirate. They all emphasize that, for now, these are just possibilities.
The Republican's motivation is to speed up talks after the defeat that his Republican Party suffered in the midterm elections last week, which took control of both Houses of Congress from the president.
As a result, there is a risk that Trump's foreign policy initiatives will suffer congressional interference. The Kremlin's initial reading is that anything resembling a peace agreement being put on the table would take away the potential opposition from Democrats.
The Kremlin also celebrated the choice of radical Stephen Miller as Trump's chief of staff in this new phase of the government. As a fundamentalist of the president's populist movement, he has even criticized Putin, but reserves his biggest complaints for Volodymir Zelensky.
There are several obstacles to the proposal being floated in Moscow. The biggest is the possible inclusion of NATO in the more general negotiation, which since before the war was Putin's main strategic motivator regarding the conflict.
There seems to be no chance that countries like Poland, where the US has stationed 10,000 troops, or Lithuania, which hosts the first German brigade abroad since the Second World War, will accept Putin's initial suggestion to withdraw forces to NATO borders in 1997 — when both Eastern European countries were not part of the alliance.
Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the continent's main countries, would also not bend, and any decisions within NATO require consensus. What Trump can do is be unilateral, pulling back American personnel and weapons, but even that seems too radical.
Be that as it may, there was even a public smoke signal of the Republican's intentions. His son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump's main negotiator alongside Steve Witkoff, caused alarm in Europe when he published a post commenting on his father-in-law's umpteenth sentence about imminent peace in Ukraine.
The long exposition says that an agreement is being prepared that includes Europe's relationship with Russia as a whole, exactly what Putin always wanted.
He listed five objectives: "permanent security consultations, credible crisis communication, greater military transparency, reciprocal measures to reduce escalatory risks, and a durable long-term framework for European security."
The terms reproduce what Putin defends, and in the "reciprocal measures" lies the European fear of undue concessions. In fact, Ukraine and its demands were not even mentioned.
Thus, the chance that Zelensky, who has already been called "insolent" by Miller, will have to accept the loss of around 20% of his territory already under Russian occupation appears to increase. The European idea of a permanent peacekeeping force in Ukraine, something the Kremlin rejects, is also distant in this scenario.
Russian observers interviewed by the report remember, in any case, that Trump has already leaned heavily in favor of Putin since returning to power last year, but then retreated. So, everyone suggested caution about the chances of something evolving.
There are other factors: Trump's controversial agreement to purchase Russian diesel not only did not reduce the price of fuel in the USA: it has not actually been implemented so far, with ships changing routes along the way. There are doubts in Moscow whether the Republican will be able to deliver any of his promises.
For his part, Putin is keeping the war at a high temperature, having carried out a major attack on Ukraine on Saturday (7). According to people consulted by Folha, Russia is expected to increase pressure on its neighbor's energy infrastructure until the arrival of the European winter next month.
The Russian president, they say, believes he can defeat Ukraine militarily, even though the battlefront in the east has stabilized over the past two months.
The cost is brutal for both sides, but a rare data leak from Russia's Federal Statistical Service this weekend gave a measure of the tragedy.
