Putin ‘open to’ Ukraine deal with Trump, but won’t cede territory

Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Donald Trump, but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking have said.

US President-elect Trump, who has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, is returning to the White House at a time of Russian ascendancy. Moscow controls a chunk of Ukraine — about the size of the American state of Virginia — and is advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.

In the first detailed reporting of what Putin would accept in any deal brokered by Trump, the five current and former Russian officials said Kremlin could broadly agree to freeze the conflict along the front lines. There may be room for negotiation over the precise carve-up of the four eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to three of them, who all requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Moscow claims the four regions as wholly part of Russia, defended by the country’s nuclear umbrella, its forces on the ground control 70-80 per cent of the territory with about 26,000 sq km still held by Ukrainian troops, open-source data on the front line shows.

Russia may also be open to withdrawing from the relatively small patches of territory that it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in the north and south of Ukraine, two of the officials said.

Earlier this month, Putin said any ceasefire deal should reflect the “realities” on the ground, but feared a short-lived truce would only allow the West to re-arm Ukraine. “If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighbourly relations between Russia and Ukraine,” Putin told the Valdai discussion group on November 7.

Two of the sources said outgoing US President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire American ATACMS missiles deep into Russia could complicate and delay any settlement.

Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Kyiv said it would stay closed on Wednesday after receiving a warning of a potentially significant Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital. The precautionary step came after Russian officials promised a response to President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets on Russian soil with US-made missiles.

The war, which reached its 1,000-day on Tuesday, has taken on a growing international dimension with the arrival of North Korean troops to help Russia on the battlefield — a development which US officials said prompted Biden’s policy shift.

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