Bloomberg: Kremlin not expecting breakthrough from peace talks with Ukraine in UAE
1 February 00:21
The Kremlin does not see any significant chances for a “breakthrough” in the peace talks with Ukraine, a new round of which is scheduled for February 1 in Abu Dhabi, Bloomberg reports, citing sources familiar with the situation, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports.
According to the agency’s interlocutors, military delegations are clarifying the technical details of a possible truce, but the key territorial issue requires political decisions at the highest level.
Putin continues to insist that Ukraine surrender the entire Donbas region without a fight, citing the “Anchorage formula,” which, according to the Kremlin, the Russian president agreed with Donald Trump. Moscow is ready to freeze the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Putin considers this a concession, as he initially claimed four regions of Ukraine, Bloomberg sources said.
Moscow considers the previous meeting in Abu Dhabi, after which a short energy “truce” was agreed, to be constructive, the agency’s interlocutors emphasized. According to them, the military plans to continue negotiations, although they are not particularly optimistic about the prospects for a peace agreement, as the territorial issue remains unresolved.
On the eve of the talks in Abu Dhabi, Kremlin special representative Kirill Dmitriev flew to Miami, where Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence is located. The Europeans, who previously insisted that Russian-Ukrainian negotiations were impossible without their participation, were not invited to Miami and have very little idea of what is happening in the negotiation process, one EU diplomat told Bloomberg.
On the eve of the next meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations, which this time will take place without the participation of US representatives, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the agreement on security guarantees for Ukraine. According to him, they include the deployment of French and British troops in the country with American support.
However, the Kremlin immediately rejected the Western guarantees. “No one agreed on this with the Russian side,” presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said on January 29. The guarantees are aimed at preserving the “Russophobic regime” and turning Ukraine into a “springboard for creating threats to the Russian Federation,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on the same day.
Although Putin has so far shown no willingness to back down from his maximalist demands, the US political calendar could be a factor for the Kremlin, notes Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
“The conditions Trump is offering to end the war are the best for Putin in four years,” Gabuev said. “It is unlikely that such proposals will remain on the table forever. If Trump loses control of Congress (which is likely), it will be able to put a spoke in the wheel of everything he wants to do.”
