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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Pressure on Ukraine for peace will achieve nothing: the agreement Kyiv could agree to does not exist at the moment. The United States is assembling delegations of Ukraine and Russia for talks in Abu Dhabi 10–11 in November. Russia demands not only the rest of Donbas, but also Ukraine's neutrality and a return of NATO to a state of the mid- 1990-s, said Danish military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen.
In the West, calls for Ukraine to strike a peace agreement are sounding more and more often. Their authors believe that aid to Kyiv has no prospects, and delay will only worsen the terms. A similar argument was heard from the American side during the negotiations between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding diesel and discussion of easing sanctions on Russia. Some European politicians and commentators echo it.
All this is based on the assumption that a ready-made version of an agreement exists, and Kyiv simply does not want to sign it. The conclusion: simply increase pressure.
Many believe that Ukraine will not stop until it liberates all occupied territories and returns to the borders of 1991 year. And Putin, as they think, only wants the rest of Donbas, after which he is ready for peace. It turns out that Russia is close to its goal, Ukraine is far from its, and Moscow looks like the reasonable party. However, this is a false picture of the positions of the parties.
After the full-scale invasion 2022 year, Ukraine really thought the war would end only when the Russians were completely expelled. It was the same in 2023 year, when a large counteroffensive failed. After that, the rhetoric changed. At the end of 2024 year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky clearly stated: the war could end even if part of the country remained occupied.
Kyiv cannot recognize these territories as Russian. But it is ready to stop fighting while leaving them under Russia's control. This means Kyiv agrees that in the near term it cannot reclaim these lands. This position has held for almost two years. That is why Ukraine quickly agreed to Trump’s proposal 2025 year for a ceasefire along the current front line, from which negotiations could begin. It is strange that journalists keep asking Zelensky if he would be ready for a deal without returning all lands. His “yes” is presented as a sensation, although there is nothing new in it.
For Kyiv, losing territory is closely linked to security guarantees for the rest of the country. Ukraine wants to be sure that this is the last war and that Russia will not return in a few years. Without reliable guarantees it will not stop the war.
Moscow has a different position. In the West it is often believed that Putin wants the rest of Donbas and then will agree to peace. But he has never said this. Putin said something else: if Ukraine gives up the rest of Donbas, Russia is ready to stop fire for the time of negotiations about the rest of its demands. That is, Donbas is only the first step.
Putin set out these demands in June 2024 year at a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry. To this day he, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and other Russian officials refer to it. Ukraine must cede the rest of Donbas, as well as parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions that are not yet occupied, because Russia has already formally declared these regions its own. It must also become neutral, without external security guarantees, undergo “demilitarization” and “denazification.” In Russian terminology this means restricting the Ukrainian army's numbers and a new pro-Russian government in Kyiv, i.e., regime change.
Separately, Moscow puts forward demands on European security in general. This is what it calls eliminating the root causes of the conflict. The Kremlin wants major powers — Russia and the United States, which it considers the masters of Europe — to agree on dividing the continent into spheres of influence. Moscow seeks to return NATO to a state of the mid- 1990-s. It spelled this out in detail even 2021 year, before the full-scale invasion, and still refers to that list when talking about concessions it expects from the Alliance.
Ukraine proposes freezing the front and discussing security guarantees for the rest of the country so that Russia cannot renew the war in a few years. Russia considers the current situation unacceptable: it wants the rest of Donbas, as well as parts of two regions, a pro-Russian government in Kyiv, and a completely different European security architecture.
Many will find this exaggerated: supposedly Putin cannot want this. “Yes, it’s madness, but Putin is really that crazy,” Nielsen said.
Part of Western skeptics urges listening to Russia, while never listening to its words themselves. The Kremlin does not hide its aims and directly names the concessions it expects from the West. So the skeptics' argument rests on assuming that Russians’ words should not be taken seriously. This is an arrogant stance, as if toward children: we know better than Russians what they mean.
Some will say that this is just bargaining and Russia does not expect to obtain everything. Let’s suppose. Then one should decide which of these concessions Ukraine and Europe should make and where the compromise “50 on 50” lies. Such a conversation is absurd, but also purely hypothetical: the agreement must be accepted by Ukraine, and NATO does not make decisions for it.
Even if both sides are ready for compromises, they see the middle differently. Moreover, they disagree on who should negotiate with whom and about what. For Kyiv, this is negotiations with Moscow: finding a middle ground between Russia’s demands and Ukraine’s wishes. The likely outcome would be a frozen front line and negotiations on security guarantees for the rest of the country. For Russia, however, this is negotiations with the United States. It seeks a middle ground between its own and American positions on Eastern Europe. So Moscow’s minimum is to get all of Ukraine, and the real bargain would be what else it would obtain.
Putin hopes to achieve this at the negotiating table. “This is not about Donbas, but about half of Europe,” Nielsen stressed. He does not believe Europeans and Americans have the resolve and political will to sustain support for Ukraine for a long time. Putin does not even think Europe has influence, so he intends to bargain with the United States.
Therefore any agreement acceptable to Putin would mean at least Ukraine’s capitulation and even more. Ukraine will not stop fighting in the near term. In the United States and Western Europe it is not about whether they want the war to end, but how it will continue: whether they will continue supporting Ukraine or leave it alone with the aggressor. It should be remembered that Putin’s goals go far beyond Ukraine. The West is better off helping Kyiv so that the war ends on terms much closer to Ukrainian than to Putin’s.
Trump, after meeting with the Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, spoke of a “great deal” that might concern all of Europe. According to CNN, such an offer could only spur Putin to escalate the war.
Meanwhile, Ruste Umyev, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, after consultations in Brussels, said that security guarantees must be an effective system, not a political declaration.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Dmybyga said Zelensky is ready to discuss with Putin also the territorial issue. Zelensky himself earlier first allowed discussion of security guarantees for Russia, but only after Ukraine’s needs are taken into account.
About what the Kremlin actually wants from Europe, in the ZN.UA article “Peace under a Russian ultimatum: what the Kremlin really wants from Europe?” writes Oleksiy Izhak, head of the National Institute for Strategic Studies.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Андерс Нільсен: угоди, яку Україна могла б підписати, нині не існує". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ZN.ua.
