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What game is Putin playing in the cease-fire talks?

GET UP TO SPEED

Not nyet, at least not yet. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first public remarks in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to broker a thirty-day cease-fire in Russia’s war in Ukraine. “The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” Putin said, before saying that the details needed to be discussed further and any deal must address the war’s “root causes.” Then Putin met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff into the wee hours of Friday—with neither the White House nor the Kremlin sharing much about how those talks went. For talks that are always fruitful, we turned to our experts to interpret these signals and explore what’s coming next.

TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY

Ian Brzezinski (@IanBrzezinski): Senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy

Justina Budginaite-Froehly (@JustBudginaite): Nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and a former official in the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense

Daniel Fried (@AmbDanFried): Weiser Family distinguished fellow and a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe

Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova): Nonresident fellow with the Eurasia Center, and journalist and researcher from Belarus

Trump’s pitch

Ian calls Trump’s proposal “the most tangible prospect to end the violence” in Ukraine since Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The proposal, which was endorsed by Ukraine earlier this week at talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is “a public test of Putin’s readiness to pursue peace, if not to shelve his imperial ambitions,” Ian tells us.

Jeddah was a turning point for Ukraine, too, by shifting the focus back to Russia as an obstacle to peace, says Justina. “The first positive results are already visible: the United States has lifted the ban on military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The next results—likely envisioned by Ukraine in advance—are incoming: Putin cannot agree to this cease-fire.”

Putin’s balk

Putin’s response tying the cease-fire to the war’s “root causes” is his “way of demanding Ukraine’s permanent exclusion from NATO, neutered Ukrainian armed forces, and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s removal from office,” Ian tells us.

Putin started the war “claiming that Ukraine and its Western supporters posed an existential threat to Russia,” Justina points out. Accepting a cease-fire brokered by Ukraine and the United States would represent “a strategic defeat in Putin’s world.”

Putin’s stated cease-fire conditions are “not a promising start, at least in public,” Dan tells us. Given that Trump called Putin’s comments “incomplete” and stressed the need for a quick cease-fire, Dan says this could mean that Trump “will push Putin for a more forthcoming response,” just as the White House put pressure on Zelenskyy.

On the sidelines

Putin was flanked on Thursday by Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. “It almost seemed as if Putin needed his closest ally to back him up, with Lukashenka dutifully playing his part,” says Hanna. “Yet again, this only emphasized Belarus’s near-total dependence on Russia.”

Belarus has been an accomplice in Russia’s war on Ukraine. However, says Hanna, “With uncertainties surrounding peace talks and Russia’s efforts to emerge from isolation, Lukashenka now finds it harder than ever to remain relevant for Putin.”

On deck

The next phase of US-Russia talks will depend on what was said behind closed doors in Moscow. “What is not publicly known, at least not yet,” says Dan, “is what Putin told Witkoff and whether Putin and Trump will speak soon.”

“The next step will be even more difficult,” Ian warns. What’s needed for a lasting peace is a security framework for Ukraine that “deters further Russian aggression, holds Moscow accountable for the devastation it has imposed on Ukraine, and does not reward Russia with territory seized through military aggression.” That means “the ball may be heading back in Trump’s court.”

Will Trump now push for Russia to accept an unconditional cease-fire, Dan asks, or will he “allow Putin to complicate and delay, attaching conditions to a cease-fire that undermine the US initiative while Putin seeks Ukraine’s effective capitulation?”

Ian argues that a failure to swiftly execute “maximum pressure” on Russia “would make Trump look weak.” That’s because by generating and driving forward this cease-fire proposal, Ian surmises, Trump has “put his own credibility, including his toughness, on the line.”