In a huge development, President Vladimir Putin has offered to halt his invasion of Ukraine across the current front line as part of ongoing efforts to work with US President Donald Trump toward reaching a permanent peace deal. This reportedly happened during ongoing dialogue with Trump’s top envoys.
This is according to several sources which spoke to Financial Times, which wrote further in a Wednesday report, “The proposal is the first formal indication Putin has given since the war’s early months three years ago that Russia could step back from its maximalist demands to end the invasion.”
“The Russian president told Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, during a meeting in St Petersburg earlier this month that Moscow could relinquish its claims to areas of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions that remain under Kyiv’s control, three of the people said,” FT continues.
The Kremlin side has not publicly acknowledged this, and so the breaking report should be taken with a grain of salt, given this contradicts Putin’s public stance that Russia will never relinquish the four territories which were declared part of the Russian Federation after the Moscow-backed referendums of Sept. 2022.
However, if Russian forces did simply halt their advance based on an agreed-upon freeze in fighting, there would be portions of these territories still not under Russian military control.
The FT report goes on, “The US has since floated ideas for a possible settlement that includes Washington recognizing Russian ownership of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, the people added, as well as at least acknowledging the Kremlin’s de facto control over the parts of the four regions it currently holds.”
All of this is being reported hours after Ukraine’s President Zelensky said he has rejected the possibility of ceding over Crimea, after the Trump administration reportedly offered the ‘gift’ to Putin of US recognition of Russian sovereignty over the strategic peninsula and home to the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet.
According to Ukrainian media:
Ukraine will not legally recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea under any circumstances, President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a briefing in Kyiv on April 22.
“There is nothing to talk about. This violates our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters.
Zelensky added, “As soon as talks about Crimea and our sovereign territories begin, the talks enter the format that Russia wants — prolonging the war – because it will not be possible to agree on everything quickly.”
Kiev has also recently accused Moscow of using negotiations as a smokescreen while in actuality prolonging the war, also coming off the 30-hour Eastern truce, which saw both sides accuse the other of many violations.
The Financial Times acknowledged this possibility, and the fact that Moscow is in the driver’s seat related to a settlement that would end the conflict, in the following:
But European officials briefed on US efforts to end the war cautioned that Putin would probably use the apparent concession as bait to lure Trump into accepting Russia’s other demands and forcing them on Ukraine as a fait accompli. “There is a lot of pressure on Kyiv right now to give up on things so Trump can claim victory,” one of them said.
The reality remains that if Zelensky can’t so much as admit that Crimea will be permanently in Russia’s hands, with no hope of Kiev ever getting it back, the prospects of peace settlement happening soon seems very remote.
But clearly Moscow is seeking to show itself willing to compromise by these overtures, but whether there’s much substance or genuineness behind the offer to halt all frontline fighting is another question. At the moment, at least 99.5% of Kursk territory is back in Russia’s control.
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