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Vladimir Putin has offered to halt his invasion of Ukraine along the current front line as part of efforts to reach a peace deal with US President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Russian president told Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, during a meeting in St. Petersburg earlier this month that Moscow could give up its claims to areas of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions that remain under Kiev's control, three of the people said.
The United States has since floated ideas for a possible solution 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 parts of the four regions it currently owns.
The proposal is the first official indication Putin has given since the start of the war three years ago that Russia might back down from its maximalist demands to end the occupation.
But European officials briefed on U.S. efforts to end the war warned 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.
Ukrainian officials are set to meet with European and American officials in London on Wednesday to discuss the latest proposals. However, Witkoff and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have pulled out of the meeting, according to U.S. and European officials. Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is still expected to attend. Putin’s foreign policy adviser said Tuesday that Witkoff would visit Moscow later this week, according to Russian news reports.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told the FT: " Tense work is underway. We are talking to the Americans. The work is difficult and takes a lot of time, so it is difficult to expect immediate results and the work cannot be done in public."
Trump posted on social media Sunday that he hoped Ukraine and Russia would "make a deal this week" and then "start doing business with the booming United States of America and make a fortune!"
The United States floated ideas that the White House hopes could shape the outlines of a possible deal at a meeting in Paris last week with European and Ukrainian officials. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that he had not received a proposal from Trump outlining specific steps toward ending Russia's war. But he said that once a ceasefire was in place, he would be ready for direct talks with Putin.
"There are signals, ideas, discussions, but it is not an official proposal, " Zelensky said.
Senior Ukrainian officials told the FT they were open to some of the ideas put forward by Trump and his team without specifying which ones in particular. The US proposals include deploying a European peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine, as well as a separate, non-NATO military force to help monitor a ceasefire along a demilitarized zone spanning the entire 1,000km front line.
The forces would work alongside Ukrainian and Russian forces monitoring the ceasefire on their respective sides of the so-called contact line. Under a possible deal, Ukraine would pledge not to retake territory occupied by Russia by force, while Russia would agree to halt the slow advance of its military.
It is unclear whether Trump has asked Ukraine to formally recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Zelensky reiterated his position on the Black Sea peninsula on Tuesday, saying: " Ukraine will not recognize the occupation of Crimea. It is our territory, the territory of the Ukrainian people, there is nothing to discuss here."
Russia has also rejected some of the US suggestions, including a military presence for NATO countries in Ukraine.
But people familiar with the matter said Putin would potentially be prepared to give ground on his previous demand for full control over Ukraine's four frontline regions - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - if the US made broader geopolitical concessions to Moscow, such as recognizing its control of Crimea and barring Ukraine from joining NATO.
Although Putin introduced constitutional amendments in 2020 that prohibited Russia from giving up claims to any of its territories, Konstantin Remchukov, a Kremlin-linked newspaper editor, claimed in a column published on Sunday that Moscow could end the fighting after expelling Ukrainian forces from Kursk — a Russian region that “Kiev partially took under its control on Saturday.”
"When they liberate the last half, then the troops can stop wherever they are when the news reaches them. Trump understands this, thanks to Witkoff. And it is hoped that all this will happen by April 30, so that he can proudly declare that he accomplished his peace mission in the first 100 days of his presidency," Remchukov wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Putin announced the annexation of four southeastern Ukrainian provinces at a lavish ceremony in the Kremlin in September 2022, even though Russia did not fully control any of them at the time. Russia still does not fully control any of the four regions, although it has held the regional capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk since its first covert invasion of eastern Ukraine using local proxy forces in 2014.
Although Russia withdrew from some of the territory it occupied in the fall of 2022, Putin said last year that he would not accept any peace deal unless Ukraine withdrew its troops from the front lines and gave Russia full control over four provinces including the city of Zaporizhzhia, an industrial city of 700,000 troops but which Russia has never regularly held.
Previous Russian demands for a peace deal have included a pledge by Ukraine to remain neutral and abandon its NATO aspirations, recognition of Russian claims to annexed territories, easing of Western sanctions and a reduction of NATO forces in member states close to Russia.
A State Department spokesman said they could not comment on the "substance of the negotiations."/ FinancialTimes
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