by Prasad Nallapati*
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has welcomed American efforts to bring a ceasefire in the Ukraine war, but wanted clarifications whether it meets Moscow’s oft-repeated “core” war objectives.
“The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” Putin said, but he said any such peace process must address the “root causes” of the conflict. He also insisted on Ukraine not being allowed to rearm or mobilize forces while halting western military aid to Kyiv during the 30-day ceasefire.
President Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has held discussions with Russian officials and is carrying back their ideas to Washington for further consideration. Trump himself is expected to talk to Putin over phone.
Ukraine has agreed to the ceasefire following talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia. In return, the US would resume military assistance and intelligence sharing to Ukraine which were frozen last week following White House debacle that led to President Zelensky being shown the door.
It is also agreed to accelerate negotiations for an agreement on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and Zelensky is expected to return to the White House to sign the accord.
A ceasefire and follow-up peace accord would, in addition to economic dividends, be a foreign policy success for President Trump who may be eyeing for a Nobel Prize. Ukraine would get western guarantees and be spared of further destruction to fight another day.
Russia, on the other hand, has no incentives to end the war particularly when it has an upper hand in the fight. It is true that Trump administration has repeatedly stated that Ukraine would have to live with territorial losses to Russia and no NATO membership.
Russia’s core interest is to have Ukraine as a non-militarized buffer zone, which was earlier agreed to by President Reagan but flouted by subsequent US administrations. Moscow went into war to enforce it and anything less than that would be construed as a defeat.
Russia has significant advantages both at the battlefield as well as in domestic arena. It is on the verge of throwing out Ukrainian forces which occupied Russia’s southern areas of Kursk and advancing on other fronts in eastern Ukraine.
Notwithstanding the western propaganda, President Putin has strong support for his war effort from Russian society. This support is sustained not just by nationalistic sentiment but also by the fact that much of Russia’s population is spared of the full economic and human costs of war.
The Russian economy remained resilient and helped sustain its war effort, despite western sanctions and high inflation. The GDP growth, according to Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service, was reported as 4.1 per cent during 2024. Unemployment rates fell to post-Soviet lows in mid-2024, and have subsequently dropped to around 2 per cent.
President Putin’s stance of seeking clarifications from the US on the ceasefire is being demonized by the western hardliners, including Trump’s close associates themselves, advocating extreme sanctions on Russia.
The US President, however, is more restrained, unlike in the case of Zelensky, and is willing to invest more effort and time to get Putin around. The latter himself is in no mood to rock the boat as there is lot to gain by re-setting the relations with more forthcoming American leadership, though not at the cost of Russian regional security interests.
It is, therefore, in the interest of both the US and Russia to be more realistic of each others’ interests and expectations and not get carried away by pressures from hawks so as to work out a reasonably acceptable solution to the Ukraine problem.
(*Prasad Nallapati is President of the Hyderabad-based think-tank, “Deccan Council for Strategic Initiatives”, and former Additional Secretary to the Govt of India)
