Putin Doubles-Down on Non-Negotiable Terms on Ukraine

Executive Summary:

• Moscow’s latest offer to start talks with Kyiv amounts to a set of non-negotiable demands, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is redoubling his attempts to impose the settlement terms discussed in 2022, supplemented by several aggravating conditions.
• The Kremlin has de-recognized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and claims to seek legitimate and credible interlocutors in Kyiv, with Putin, in effect, claiming a role of arbitrating Ukraine’s constitutional setup.
• Russia seeks to force terms on Ukraine under the appearance of a consented surrender. Moscow wants Kyiv to accept those terms and begin the process of complying with them as preconditions to granting Ukraine a ceasefire.

Russia is waging a typical war of unlimited aims in Ukraine. Such wars seek to overthrow a country’s leadership and replace it with an obedient one; change a country’s value system (in this case, annihilate its national identity); severely reduce its population; permanently disarm the country; and deprive it of protection by potential allies. Within this unlimited agenda, Moscow is also waging a classical war of limited aims in Ukraine. This envisages territorial annexations, carving more favorable borders or buffer zones across Ukraine, appropriating Ukraine’s economic resources stranded in the occupied territories, and allowing a devastated rump country to subsist after the war. Both sets of aims are embodied in the settlement terms that Russia sought to impose on Ukraine in the spring of 2022, which Kyiv briefly considered before rejecting them.

Now, the Kremlin has thrust these conditions back onto the agenda with some aggravating conditions (see EDM, May 29, 30). Russia seeks to force Ukraine into surrendering under the appearance of a consented surrender. This, in turn, requires the appearance of a negotiating process toward that same outcome. Keen to stage sham peace negotiations, the Kremlin feels frustrated by the alleged lack of legitimate and credible interlocutors in Kyiv (see EDM, June 6).

Moscow has therefore moved to de-recognize Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, citing the technical expiry of Zelenskyy’s five-year term since May 20. Hence, “Zelenskyy is a nobody” in the words of Russian propaganda. The de-recognition is one of the aggravating conditions on top of Moscow’s 2022 settlement terms. More broadly, Russian President Vladimir Putin now claims a role of arbitrating Ukraine’s constitutional setup. In his recent public statements, Putin delved into interpreting Ukraine’s constitution and legislation (Kremlin.ru, May 17, 24, 28, June 5). He ultimately concluded that Zelenskyy has lost legal authority, whereas the Ukrainian parliament retains its constitutional authority and can, therefore, delegate its representatives to “peace talks” with Russia (see EDM, May 29, 30, June 6).

The Kremlin plays strict constructionist with Zelenskyy’s five-year term, whereas the Ukrainian political consensus deems Zelenskyy fully legitimate based on the combined effects of Ukraine’s constitution, its law on the state of war, and its electoral code. While Moscow’s legal-technical case is easy to dismiss, its implicit claim to arbitrate Ukraine’s constitutional setup is far more serious and enduring. Russia had required major changes to Ukraine’s constitution with the 2022 settlement terms, and Putin reaffirmed those terms with additional demands in his latest public intervention.

Addressing the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 13, Putin urged Kyiv to enter “peace talks” with Moscow based on the authority of the Verkhovna Rada (see EDM, June 13). He falsely claimed again that Kyiv had accepted the terms of settlement in 2022. (Moscow names those terms as “Istanbul documents,” though it was but a fleeting moment in a two-month process.)

 According to Putin, “Our conditions for starting such a conversation are as follows” (Kremlin.ru, June 14; TASS, June 16):

•  Withdrawal of all Ukrainian forces from the entire territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, “namely … as defined by their administrative boundaries when they were part of Ukraine”;
•  Recognition by Ukraine of the new territorial realities regarding Crimea, the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as constituent parts of the Russian Federation;
• Official announcements by Ukraine that it renounces plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and that it adopts permanent neutrality, nonalignment, and the status of a nonnuclear state;
• Demilitarization of Ukraine “as agreed on the whole at the Istanbul talks in 2002, where all the parameters of demilitarization were written down: the numbers of this or that [troops and weapons systems], everything was agreed;”
• Denazification of Ukraine (Putin stopped short of going into details);
•  Guaranteeing the rights, freedoms, and interests of the “Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine” (undefined, highly elastic); and
• All of the above is to be codified by treaties.

The Kremlin leader concluded, “As soon as Kyiv accepts this course of action and begins this process, we will respond by ordering a ceasefire and start talks without delay. As part of this process, we will guarantee the safe and unimpeded withdrawal of Ukrainian troops.” All this “naturally presupposes lifting all Western sanctions against Russia.”

Russia demands more Ukrainian territory now and more imperatively than it did in the spring of 2022. At that time, Moscow led Kyiv to believe in the possibility of an armistice along the February 23, 2022 frontlines; a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting to discuss the disposition of territories Russia seized after February 24; and deferring an official solution regarding Crimea by up to 15 years. 

The options seemingly open then, however, are no longer available now. Moscow had demanded Kyiv’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “independent republics,” but it now demands recognition of Russia’s annexation thereof. The Kremlin has, since then, also annexed the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces and demands Kyiv’s recognition of that action as well. It wants Kyiv to satisfy Russia’s claims to territories still under Ukraine’s control in those four mainland provinces and precludes a face-saving “deferred solution” regarding Crimea.

Moscow wants Kyiv to accept those terms and begin the process of complying with them as preconditions to granting Ukraine a ceasefire. The promise to allow Ukrainian troops to evacuate safely lacks credibility. Russia violated that same promise at Ilovaysk in August 2014 and at Debaltseve in February 2015, inflicting heavy casualties.

Russian territorial demands are not limited to those listed in Putin’s speech. Follow-up statements by Putin and his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, mentioned that Russia reserves the right to occupy parts of Ukraine’s Kharkiv province as a buffer to protect Russia’s Belgorod and possibly other Russian oblasts (TASS, June 14, 16). The Russian army had occupied a large part of Ukraine’s Kharkiv province from February to September 2022, long before any Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod. The Russian military-civilian administration installed in 2022 holds on to a small part of Ukraine’s Kharkiv province. Russia could invoke the need for a buffer zone to bring additional territory under that administration.

Moscow’s demands do not even claim to represent a basis for negotiations with Kyiv. They amount, instead, to preconditions to holding talks. By the same token, they predetermine the outcome of such talks: a settlement on Russian-dictated terms with appearances of Ukrainian consent.