Ukraine Allies Can't Give In to Putin's Demands for Ending War

The Kremlin has suggested that negotiations could be on the table to end the war in Ukraine, but Russian President Vladimir Putin's demands are putting the West in a bind that is unlikely to result in a cease-fire.

While discussing the possibility of peace talks on Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia is "always ready to listen to our Western colleagues if they make another request to organize a conversation," and named two specific requests for negotiating an end to the war. He wants the West to consider Russia's security interests and take "approaches that will help defuse tensions."

For the last eight months since the invasion of Ukraine began, Russia has shown little interest in ending the war unless Ukraine gives in to their demands. Peace talks have been stalled for months despite Putin's major battlefield setbacks that have prompted a partial mobilization of Russia's population. Russia has even blamed the United States for the lack of a peace agreement, but Lavrov's recent comments signal the Kremlin may be changing its tune.

Experts told Newsweek that Putin proposing ideas Moscow knows the West would never accept are part of a larger plan to fracture the coalition of Western nations that have rallied behind Ukraine.

"Each time the Russians have mentioned negotiations, it's a test—they want to see how close the West would be to actually engaging with them," William Reno, a political science professor at Northwestern University, said.

Ukraine's desire to join NATO—an alliance whose relations with Russia has long been fraught—has been at the forefront of Putin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion on February 24. In the months leading up to the war, Russia had demanded that NATO, which it sees as a paramount threat to its security interests, prohibit Ukraine from ever joining. It is likely that Moscow would once again request Ukraine's neutrality should negotiations begin.

NATO has refused to enter any legally binding contract that would go against its "open-door" policy, insisting that Ukraine as a sovereign nation has the right to apply for membership, just like a number of other Eastern Bloc states have in the past. But up until this point, the U.S. and other member nations have shown reluctance to allow Ukraine into NATO under current conditions.

Reno said Russia knows NATO isn't going to allow Putin to dictate the terms of the alliance, so the main goal of putting those demands on the table is to "find out what the Americans will negotiate and what the Ukrainians are willing to do."

The other reason the Kremlin is putting NATO concessions at the top of its list is to create tensions among Ukraine's allies, which Russia hopes will peel off the West's support from Ukraine.

With 30 independent member nations, each with their own security interests and their own tolerance for risk, it would be much more difficult for NATO to reach a consensus as to when talks with Russia should begin. At the same time, because there is just one Russia, Putin has a big advantage.

Reno said a lot of the Baltic states are less likely to enter negotiations this early out of fears the West could embolden Putin by agreeing to major concessions, while countries like France, where voters are more concerned with inflation and a looming energy crisis, may be more pressed to negotiate.

"If you try to keep that pressure up, then what it does is it creates a dispute within NATO," he said. "Whenever you have a larger number of partners, their interests are inevitably going to diverge a bit, and that coalition is harder to keep together."

Negotiations may be more enticing to the U.S., who does not want to be dragged by Ukraine into a nuclear war with Russia. Reno said it's important to understand that the U.S. and Ukraine do not have exactly the same interests. So while Ukraine may want to "go right to the brink" in terms of escalating the effort against Russia, the war does not necessarily matter as much to the everyday American.

An Ipsos poll released last month found that two-thirds of Americans agree that the U.S. should continue to provide weapons to Ukraine, despite Russia's threats of nuclear weapons. At the same time, the war is outranked by other issues like the economy, abortion and crime for American voters, who are headed to the polls in less than a week.

Reno said Moscow is well aware that Americans, and other citizens around the world, are further removed from the conflict, and so Kremlin officials are likely watching elections unfold to "exploit the politics of divergent interests."

The Biden administration has also signaled that the U.S. won't negotiate with Russia unless Ukraine wants to—a position Michael Kimmage, who previously held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio on the State Department's policy planning staff, said is unlikely to change.

"Russian and Ukrainian terms are completely incompatible with each other," Kimmage told Newsweek. "I don't think that Washington or other capitals would start going over the head of Ukraine to negotiate."

Asked how long the war would have to wage in order for the U.S. to reconsider that stance, Kimmage said: years.

"Perhaps in the spring, or in the summer, but even that might be a bit of a short-term time frame," he said. "For the U.S. to accept any permanent occupation of Ukrainian territory by Russia, which is a total Russian precondition for ending the conflict, that's just going to be hugely difficult."

Sacrifices on both sides would be difficult. While Putin may want security guarantees from NATO, the alliance is also likely to demand Russia pay reparations to rebuild Ukraine, Lawrence Reardon, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said.

"Putin undoubtedly would reject reparations and his restoration of Novorossiya dream of controlling southern Ukraine," Reardon told Newsweek, suggesting that it's unlikely either sides would be willing to reach a settlement at this time.