Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin is highly unlikely to embrace a United States-brokered ceasefire proposal that Ukraine has already endorsed, a former Russian diplomat warned Thursday.
The Russian leader won’t see it as in his interest to accept and he will seek to bog down discussions by raising a never-ending series of modifications in order to sink it, said Boris Bondarev, who worked for the Russian permanent mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva until he resigned in opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine.
“Putin has no interest in a ceasefire,” Bondarev told POLITICO. “He thinks he can achieve his goals through fighting. I think he feels quite confident.”
The former Russian diplomat was speaking as U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow for discussions on the proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine — a truce the White House hopes will pave the way to a larger and comprehensive peace settlement to end Russia’s three-year-old full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Kremlin officials have already cast doubt on the proposal. A Putin foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov — who participated last month in a meeting with U.S. negotiators in Saudi Arabia — described the proposed ceasefire as “a hasty document.”
Trump has warned Moscow against stalling on the Ukraine ceasefire and on Wednesday threatened Russia with significant financial consequences if it fails to sign on to the agreement, brokered during negotiations earlier this week between American and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Thursday that American negotiators were arriving to explain the ceasefire proposal. “Contacts are planned,” Peskov told reporters in the Russian capital. “We will not prejudge,” Peskov added.
He didn’t say whether Witkoff would meet with Putin himself, nor if the Kremlin has already produced a list of its own demands.
Bondarev said he doesn’t think Putin is afraid of Trump. “He’s not afraid of irritating him but maybe he will tell him, ‘OK, it’s a great idea. I’d love to stop fighting. But I need some minor questions to be solved prior to the ceasefire. If you, Donald, want this deal, if you do want it, well, let’s do some minor arrangements before we start talking,’” he said.
Overall, Putin is likely to reckon that “Trump is much more concerned about a peace deal than about Ukraine,” Bondarev added.
Trump prides himself on his skill to strike deals, and he attacked Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy late last month when he viewed him as an obstacle to a peace settlement. Trump subsequently cut military aid to Kyiv and fumed that Ukrainians did not want peace, but resumed weapons supply once Ukraine had agreed to the ceasefire proposal.
Ukrainian officials hope now that Putin will become the target of Trump’s wrath. But Bondarev warned that Putin will seek to play Trump and to deflect the U.S. leader’s anger back onto Zelenskyy. “There will be always a scapegoat in Zelenskyy and Moscow will blame him for any troubles with Russia. ‘Who is to blame? Zelenskyy, of course,’” said Bondarev.
Shortly before Witkoff landed in Moscow, Putin adviser Ushakov said: “It should be worked on, and our position should also be considered and taken into account.”
He told journalists: “For now, only the Ukrainian approach is outlined there.” He suggested ceasefire steps were “unnecessary” and that negotiations should immediately commence on a broader peace deal rather than a temporary truce.
Ushakov, who on Wednesday talked by phone with U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz, said a 30-day pause in fighting would just be an opportunity for Ukrainian forces to regroup and to be refurnished by its Western allies. That could indicate that one of the Russian counterproposals will be that all Western military aid — whether from America or Europe — be stopped during any pause in fighting.
Another possible tack the Kremlin may take is to maintain that nothing can be agreed until Trump and Putin have the opportunity themselves to meet and talk.
The English-language Moscow Times reported Thursday that the Kremlin is exploring options for a potential meeting between the two leaders next month or in May.
According to Russian officials the newspaper spoke to, the Kremlin would prefer to delay a summit for as long as possible to squeeze out the maximum concessions it can from Washington, in exchange for Russia halting military actions in Ukraine.
“Time is on the Kremlin’s side,” an official said.
According to Bondarev, the Kremlin will push the line that all it wants is a “long, steady peace and of course, a deal strictly on Russian conditions” that will include a commitment that Ukraine never joins NATO and remains neutral, that there will be no Western peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine and that all Western rearmament of Ukraine ends.
For Putin a temporary ceasefire risks turning into a longer truce, Bondarev said, and “in PR terms it will be more difficult to break a ceasefire than to decline one.
The post Why Putin will seek to sink Trump’s Ukraine ceasefire plan appeared first on Politico.
