Putin’s Insurmountable Preconditions for Talks With Trump On Ukraine

Executive Summary:

• The Kremlin has addressed the incoming U.S. administration of Donald Trump in a series of public messages, reaffirming its entrenched preconditions for a dialogue regarding Ukraine. The Kremlin wants Trump’s team to bid proactively for negotiations over Ukraine on those conditions.
• Moscow has more recently introduced a sui generis interpretation of self-determination for Ukrainian territories currently under Russian occupation. It purports to re-read the UN Charter in justifying Russia’s annexations of those Ukrainian territories and potentially beyond.
• Trump’s team can inadvertently encourage Moscow’s intransigence by appearing to pursue peace talks as a goal in itself rather than as part of strategic vision for Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reaffirmed his well-known preconditions for talks with the incoming U.S. administration of Donald Trump regarding the war in Ukraine. Given Trump’s eagerness to “end this war” as a goal on as yet unspecified terms, Putin is clarifying his own terms ahead of any talks (see EDM, January 13).

Putin used his year-end news conference to establish those preconditions, directly addressing Washington and, indirectly, Kyiv (Kremlin.ru, December 19; see EDM, January 13). He confidently ruled out a ceasefire unless Ukraine sues for a political settlement. “Our army keeps advancing all along the frontline … the enemy keeps falling back and cannot dig in. They are running short of heavy equipment and ammunition, running out of soldiers … Halting a ceasefire in place would allow the enemy to dig in, to rest and be resupplied, to train and reinforce his troops.” 

Apparently playing to Trump’s “art of the deal” catchphrase, Putin professes that “politics is the art of the compromise” in eventual talks with Washington on Ukraine. “We are ready for negotiations and compromises, ready to start a dialogue without preconditions.” 

In their crescendo order, Putin’s December 19 statement details the well-known preconditions to talks and uncompromising terms of settlement.

In a follow-up, December 26 statement, Putin addressed “president-elect Trump’s team” directly, laying down two Russian markers for any talks on Ukraine. First, Moscow rules out “freezing” the war against Ukraine to await a political settlement (i.e., Ukraine must first accept Russia’s settlement terms). Second, an agreement to delay Ukraine’s NATO membership by a certain period is unacceptable to Russia. Alluding to Trump’s special envoy-designate Keith Kellogg’s earlier suggestion in that regard, Putin said that U.S. President Joe Biden had, in 2021, offered to postpone Ukraine’s NATO accession by 10 to 15 years. Putin, however, countered that even that delay “would only be a fleeting moment (‘mgnovenie’; мгновение) in historical perspective.” How, then, does the incoming administration differ from the outgoing one? Putin asked aloud (Kremlin.ru, December 26, 2024).

Putin left it for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to elaborate on “removing the primordial causes” of the war against Ukraine and Moscow’s wider contestation of the European order. Lavrov did so in three year-end review statements replete with signals for the incoming Trump administration (MID.ru, December 25, 26, 30, 2024).

Lavrov singled out two of those purported primordial causes at this time. First is the European security order resulting from NATO’s enlargement and related processes in recent decades. Second is the “Nazification” of Ukraine and the denial—by Kyiv and the West—of the purported rights of self-determination of people in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“The Ukraine crisis can only be resolved in the context of reliable agreements on security and stability in Europe,” Lavrov warned. “They lied when they assured us that NATO would not move eastward.” Russia, moreover, does not accept the “European Union’s recent decisions to subordinate itself to NATO and erase the differences between these two organizations.” Russia, he reiterated, wants “legally binding agreements for common security in Europe,” and envisages such arrangements within a wider, “single security space from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

Citing Putin’s authority, Lavrov introduced an entirely novel, sui generis interpretation of self-determination concerning the Crimea, Donbas, “Novorossiya” (south-eastern Ukraine writ large), and potentially other Ukrainian territories. Purporting to re-read the UN Charter, Moscow contends that the right of self-determination through secession prevails upon the state’s territorial integrity when the central government oppresses the population of that territory. With Kyiv’s “Nazified” government at war against the “Russia-speaking population” in south-eastern Ukraine, the latter is exercising its right of self-determination under the UN Charter in Moscow’s reading. The UN Secretary General’s office has yet to be heard taking issue with this reading of the Charter.

Lavrov, echoing Putin, insists that those two sets of demands “are not conditions, but simply demands to fulfill past agreements,” “to follow the UN Charter,” and “things that should have been carried out long ago.” On Ukraine specifically, Lavrov tells Trump and Kellogg (by name), “No agreements are possible without removing the primordial causes” of the ongoing war.

None of this indicates that Moscow is unwilling to engage in a dialogue with the incoming U.S. administration. Moscow has taken note of Trump’s eagerness to start talks and will ponder its response depending on Washington’s proposals (“the ball is in the White House’s court”). The Kremlin must hope to lure the White House into bidding for bilateral talks on terms that could short-change Ukraine and divide the NATO alliance.

Trump’s team can inadvertently encourage Moscow’s intransigence by appearing eager to start talks as a political goal in itself, not as part of a strategic vision for Europe and potentially undermining such a vision. Meanwhile, any White House-inspired reduction in U.S. security assistance to Ukraine (even on the argument that Europeans must do more) would further aggravate Ukraine’s military situation and compromise the Trump administration’s bargaining position vis-a-vis Moscow.