A chance for peace: How realistic are calls for Russia and Ukraine to restart talks?
In recent weeks there has been much talk about the possibility of renewed peace talks, but does the rhetoric have any basis in reality in either Moscow or Kyiv?
By Elizaveta Fokht and Svyatoslav Khomenko. 9 December 2022.
Nine and half months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there seems very little prospect for the hostilities to end, but both in the region and around the world there has been renewed debate about how to restart the peace process.
BBC Russian has been talking to officials in Moscow and Kyiv to ask what would it take to bring the fighting to a halt, and how could a lasting peace be achieved.
Negotiations are back on the table
Back in August, the BBC Russian reported that the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine that began in the spring had ground to a standstill, mainly due to mutual mistrust, and the fact that neither side was prepared to stop fighting. The presidents of both countries, Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, spoke openly about the absence of any terms for peace.
The situation on the ground has changed dramatically since that point. Ukraine conducted a successful counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, and liberated occupied Kherson. On 21 September, the Russian president announced a partial mobilisation, the consequences of which remain uncertain from a military point of view.
During the same period, Russia ‘incorporated’ four Ukrainian regions. Since 10 October, Russia has been carrying out regular large-scale missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving millions of people without power or water. Moscow has hinted that Kyiv could prevent these strikes by agreeing to talks.
Kyiv’s response was to accuse Russia of using terror tactics.
“When somebody wants negotiations, they don’t act like that,” said Zelensky. “Would talks really help to overcome terror? Everyone needs to answer this question honestly. Terrorists have to be neutralized.”
At the beginning of November, against the background of the Russian retreat from Kherson, Moscow released several statements alluding to the possibility of talks.
Kyiv responded: the liberation of Ukrainian cities would not be enough to begin the peace process – it would take the complete withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian land.
Fetishising the word ‘talks’
So why have peace talks suddenly become such a talking point in recent weeks?
Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhaylo Podolyak, took part in the Ukraine-Russia talks in the spring, and still remains a formal member of the negotiating group. He told the BBC that the Russian side was pushing the idea of talks, as part of what he called an ‘information campaign.’
“This is what they say: either accept our ultimatum from the beginning of the war (which is inadmissible to Ukraine) or let’s just sit down around the table so we can have a three-month operational pause,” he said. “Russia won’t even entertain the concept of talks where Ukraine could express its position.”
A BBC source, close to the Russian negotiating group, who took part in the talks in the spring, echoed Podolyak’s assessment, saying talk of negotiations was the result of “relatively aggressive Russian PR”.
“The topic of peace talks came up in a bit of an irrational way,” the source told the BBC.
“The Russian side has always maintained that we support the Minsk agreements, whilst Ukraine is against them. Now it’s the same story with the peace talks. Russia’s saying: we’re pro-peace, but the Ukrainians are always against it!”
Podoyak and the BBC source in Moscow both confirmed that aside from the rhetoric, new peace talks are not only not happening, but there has not even been any attempt to restart them.
The word ‘talks’ has been ‘fetishised” in recent months, the Russian source told the BBC. But in reality, until both sides have reached a point when they are fully ready to try to negotiate an end to the conflict, further talks would be pointless, he said.
In the summer, neither Moscow nor Kyiv wished to make any kind of concession, which would mean ending the fighting on their enemy’s terms. Both sides insisted that the war would be ended on the battlefield, not around the negotiating table. Unlike the situation at the front, this attitude has not changed much.
Following a sustained lull at the frontline in September, Ukrainian troops launched a rapid offensive, liberating most of the territory in Kharkiv region, as well as parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Between 23 and 27 September, Russia conducted ‘referendums’ in four regions: occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and the self-styled Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, after which it announced their absorption into Russian territory. This happened despite Kyiv’s warning in the spring that any attempt to annex occupied territory would end the prospect of peace talks.
According to the BBC source with ties to the Russian negotiating group, the Kremlin decided to conduct these ‘referendums’ as a direct result of defeats in Kharkiv.
“It was a completely reactive policy – ah, you’ve taken Kharkiv from us, now we’ll recognise these territories. It was an emotional decision with absolutely no consideration of the consequences,” the source said.
Not one of the annexed regions is fully under Russian control. Furthermore, on 11 November – less than a month after the 'referendum' and ‘return’ of Kherson to Russia, Russian troops were driven from the city. Kherson had been the only Ukrainian regional centre controlled by Russia from 24 February onwards.
Three days after the liberation of Kherson, Zelensky arrived in town. Whilst the international media broadcast footage of triumphant meetings between the Ukrainian president and local residents, the Kremlin insisted that both the city and region of Kherson should be considered Russian, “and there can be no changes here”.
This is perhaps now the greatest stumbling block towards peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
For Ukraine, an irrevocable condition of peace talks is the return of all territory within the internationally-recognised borders – that is to say, not just Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, ‘reclaimed’ by Russia, but also Donetsk and Luhansk within their 1991 borders, and the whole of Crimea.
Yet Russia, by ‘reunifying’ Ukraine with Russian territory, has driven itself into a legal quandary. The Russian Constitution prohibits actions which alienate Russian territory. Moscow has already committed itself to conquering the annexed territories – including those already recaptured by Ukraine – and announced that this will continue “to the victorious end”.
The source with ties to the Russian negotiating group believes there is almost no chance that Russia will concede to “crawl away,” leaving the territories behind.
Therefore, it’s still not possible to talk about negotiations. “Ukrainians will never admit that those territories are lost. And even in the post-Putin era, Russia would be very unlikely to agree to a reset. For the time being, that’s how it is,” he admits.
The Ukrainian side is equally resolute that there is no room for compromise. “No trade-offs, no ‘land for peace’ – that’s completely unacceptable,” Podolyak told the BBC.
At the start of the invasion, Kyiv was still prepared to speak with Moscow about certain compromises regarding the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
During talks held by the two sides in Istanbul in the spring, there was a suggestion that discussions over Crimea could be ‘frozen’ for the next few years, and that the fate of the Donbass region would be discussed personally by the two leaders, Zelensky and Putin.
The Ukrainian authorities are no longer willing to make such concessions, which would be “senseless,” in Podolyak’s words.
Firstly, he adds, the situation at the front has shown that Ukraine is able to achieve its goals through military means. And secondly, any concessions along the lines of ‘land for peace’ would meet a strong domestic backlash in Ukraine.
Opinion polls held in Ukraine during the summer showed the majority of Ukrainians believe that the return of all territory to the 1991 borders – including Donbass and Crimea – would be a fair and probable outcome of the war.
Authorities in Kyiv are not hiding their intent to return Donbass by military means. According to Mr. Podolyak, returning Donetsk or Luhansk under Ukrainian control would mean a 'final turning point' of the war.
Ukrainian rethoric on Crimea remains quite direct too. In a recent FT interview Volodimyr Zelensky said he would not even enter into theoretical discussions on ending the conflict without the understanding that Crimea would be returned to Ukrainian control - by either military or diplomatic means.
What are Kyiv and Moscow’s demands?
Until a certain point, Ukraine and Russian outlined their positions using the vaguest terminology possible. For Kyiv, the situation changed after the four Ukrainian regions were “reclaimed” by Russia.
As soon as Putin signed the relevant documents, Zelensky convened the National Security and Defence Council, passing the motion that there could be no more talks while Vladimir Putin was still president.
However, on November 7th, Zelensky presented Ukraine’s five conditions for peace talks: ‘restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, respect for the UN charter, compensation for all war damage, punishment for every war criminal, and guarantees that this will not happen again’. Many observers noted that the requirement to change Russia’s president had been omitted.
On November 16th Zelensky said that he received signals of Putin's readiness to talk from Ukraine's Western partners. Zelensky said that he offered to hold those talks 'publicly'. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov countered that the Kremlin 'struggles to understand' what public negotiations mean.
Podolyak told the BBC that the Ukrainian authorities were waiting for clear public statements from Russia in response to the Ukrainian ‘peace formula.’ “We want reasonable opinions, not infantile ramblings about the historical process,” he noted.
Russia’s position on when and where talks should begin and what Moscow should achieve is tricky to pinpoint. Commenting on the requirements of the Russian side at the end of October, Putin said: “It’s not always wise to lay out one’s negotiating position in advance. And yet, to reach an agreement, one has to sit at the table and negotiate.”
On 23 November, Russia launched its biggest rocket attack so far on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving millions without light and heat. The following day Putin;’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov announced that the Ukrainian government could “end the suffering of [Ukrainian] people” if it “fulfilled the demands of the Russian side.” Several days later, he clarified that to initiate peace talks, Kyiv would need “political will, and willingness to discuss Russia’s conditions, which are well known.”
Working out what these ‘well-known demands’ are remains a challenge. As the BBC has reported many times, during the first two months of Russia’s invasion alone, the goals of the so-called ‘special operation’ were constantly changing.
Initially, Putin spoke of the need to “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine, and to “bring justice” to those who committed “bloody crimes against civilians”. Peskov spoke of a need to “liberate Ukraine, and cleanse her of Nazis”. Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Foreign Minister Lavrov voiced a desire to protect themselves from the “military threat” of Ukraine. In his September speech following the annexation of the four Ukrainian regions, Putin spoke more generally about the need to guard spiritual values from the influence of the West.
The Kremlin spent months maintaining that annexing Ukrainian territory was not one of Russia’s formal goals. However, in September Putin signed an agreement over the annexation of the four regions, and in a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Human Rights on December 7th, described the ‘reclamation’ of the regions as a ‘significant result for Russia.’ “No point to hide it, the Sea of Azov had to become an internal sea within the Russian Federation, this was a serious thing.”
Similarly, the Kremlin has insisted from the very beginning of the invasion that there are no plans to remove Zelensky from the office of president. Nonetheless, at the end of November, Lavrov announced: "the Ukrainian people will be liberated from neo-Nazi rulers". Zelensky himself has often said that his physical elimination is allegedly a priority for the Russian military and sabotage groups active in Ukraine.
Podolyak told the BBC that according to the Ukrainian authorities, Russia’s demands have not changed since the spring. Russia wants its rejection of Ukraine’s territorial integrity to be recognised, and seeks the cessation of Ukrainian armed resistance, a significant reduction of Ukrainian troop numbers, and a block on Ukraine’s integration in the EU and NATO.
“Right now, neither Russia nor Ukraine is ready for peace, and will not be so in the near future,” says the Moscow-based BBC source with ties to the negotiating group. “We’re probably looking at a timeline of several decades. That’s why they’ve stopped talking about peace, they’re just not there yet. There’s an idea of finding the right moment for a truce. A basic ceasefire would be a great blessing – fewer people would die immediately after the truce, and then a more favourable environment might develop, to prevent even more deaths in the future.”
Ukrainian interlocutors believe any conversations about a truce are an attempt by Moscow to achieve an operational pause, which would buy the Russian army time to regroup, to replenish their stocks of weapons – particularly cruise missiles – and solve logistical problems for a renewed offensive.
Experts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) pointed out that a truce would work in Russia’s favour and provide much needed respite. According to ISW, Russia has taken no real steps towards either peace talks or a ceasefire. On Putin’s part, this could indicate confidence in Russia’s ability to turn the tide of the war, or at least to stabilise the front.
Read the full story in Russian here.
Translated by Pippa Crawford.