Russian President Vladimir Putin has quietly said he is open to discussing a ceasefire deal in Ukraine with US President-elect Donald Trump. Putin’s alleged position was leaked to Reuters by five Kremlin insiders and added ammunition to Trump’s plans to freeze the war in Ukraine early in his presidency.

These are promising signs for Trump’s agendabut is Russia ready to negotiate? Kremlin rhetoric suggests the answer to this question is a resounding no. On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin “has repeatedly said that any option to freeze the conflict will not work for us.”

Russia also rejected Turkey’s peace plan for Ukraine. This proposal called for freezing the current battle lines, for Ukraine not to join NATO for at least ten years, and for the deployment of international troops to a demilitarized border in eastern Ukraine. These terms accurately reflect the peace plan that Trump will present to Putin.

Unless the United States embraces Putin’s maximalist visionwhich includes the occupation of the Ukrainian-controlled areas of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Donetsk and the permanent exclusion of Ukraine from NATO membership, Russia’s short-term calculus on negotiations change.

And it is equally unlikely that Trump will accede to Putin’s outlandish demands. Even the Russian-friendly Chinese and Brazilian peace plans do not go beyond freezing the conflict on the current borders. Abandoning NATO’s open-door policy under Russian pressure would deal a long-term blow to its credibility as an alliance bloc.

Although Russia is unlikely to negotiate in good faith, it nonetheless considers the tactical value of diplomacy. Like Russian fighter jets and Wagner Group mercenaries helped Syrian President Bashar al-AssadAfter the brutal reconquest of Aleppo, Russia actively participated in the Astana peace process. As Russian forces carried out the Bucha massacre, Putin’s top diplomats were toying with the idea of ​​ending the war in Ukraine during the March 2022 Istanbul talks.

Putin’s phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the opening of ceasefire negotiations with Trump are the latest manifestation of this strategy. For the Kremlin, diplomacy is a tool of psychological warfare and a delaying tactic that facilitates military breakthroughs.

Once negotiations begin, Russia will almost certainly cite Ukraine’s use of long-range ATACM missiles on its territory and the occupation of Kursk as irrevocable points of friction. Russia wants Ukraine to make unilateral concessions on both fronts.

To stop the Ukrainian ATACM attacks, Russia could play on the sensibilities of Trump and his entourage. While National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has highlighted the risks of escalation associated with Ukraine’s use of ATACM and Trump regularly warns of World War III, Russia will intensify its policy of the tightrope in nuclear matters.

Prominent Russian commentators, such as former Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov, claim that Biden approved Ukraine’s use of ATACM to sabotage Trump’s presidency. Russian diplomats will use the negotiations to convey this speech to Trump, as it plays into the president-elect’s distrust of the US foreign policy establishment.

On Kursk, Russia will have more difficulty achieving the desired result. Ukraine is determined to keep the Kursk territory, as it wants to secure a land swap deal for the Russian-occupied parts of Kharkiv or the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Russia will likely continue its war of attrition in Kursk as negotiations begin.

Even if these issues are resolved, Russian obstructionism unlikely to end. Putin sees the continuation of the war as vital for the stability of the Russian regime. The military-industrial boom continues to prevent socio-economic unrest. Led by fascist philosopher Alexander Dugin, many Russian ultranationalists view Putin’s acquiescence in the 2015 Minsk II agreements with Ukraine as a naive act of treason.

By authorizing a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has made a Faustian pact with Russian ultranationalists. The Wagner Group mutiny in June 2023 highlighted the threat of ultranationalist dissent and Putin sees continued war as the ideal way to appease this militarized faction.

The most effective way to change Putin’s calculus is to further increase the costs of Russian aggression. Tougher sanctions could eventually burst Russia’s wartime economic bubble and degrade its military supply chains. Long-range Ukrainian strikes could disrupt Russian energy production and prevent more North Korean forces from entering the front lines. Faced with a declining economy and diminishing returns on the battlefield, Putin may be forced to negotiate seriously.

Russia is determined to survive Western support for Ukraine and views diplomacy as a tactic to achieve this goal. In negotiations with Putin, Trump must remain attentive to this reality.

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