The ‘nyet’ factor: Will Putin accept a ceasefire in Ukraine?

Putin’s response to the Ukraine ceasefire proposal isn’t an outright ‘no’, it’s a ‘yes but no but’, writes Mary Dejevsky – and for all his prevaricating, it’s clear the Russian president wants an end to the war

There was a widespread view that, as with the erstwhile Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, so with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin: the answer to any Western proposals would always be “nyet”.

And this was the prevailing premise, after Washington and Kyiv mended fences in Jeddah and called for an immediate 30-day ceasefire across all lines of battle in Ukraine. “The ball is now in Russia’s court,” said the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, at the end of the marathon meeting – into what seemed an eerie international silence.

That has not, in fact, been Putin’s response. What came instead, at a joint press conference with his ally, Alexander Lukashenko, president of neighbouring Belarus, was in part a “Yes, but, no, but...” play for time. But also quite a lot more than this. The Russian president identified specific points where the ceasefire proposal fell short of what Russia would want. It wants a complete and permanent solution – that has been its consistent demand. There are other points that, in Russia’s view, need clarification, including how any ceasefire would be policed and violations judged.

The top line, however, was that Russia wants an end to the war and, taking everything that Putin said together, this has to be at the more hopeful end of what could have been envisaged. There was no rejection, let alone an out-and-out rejection, and the impression given was that Russia is prepared to engage in the process that has now been set in train. The Russian response is especially promising, given that, according to one widely circulated view, the nature and timing of the ceasefire proposal might almost have been designed to elicit a “no”.

This was partly because repeated statements by Putin and other Russian officials expressing an openness to talks have invariably been dismissed as insincere by Ukraine and its Western allies, but mostly because of the current state of the battlefield. As things stand, Russia is less pressed for troops and equipment than Ukraine is – with or without US assistance. It holds around 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory, and this week appeared to be on the verge of recovering most of the territory in its Kursk region seized by Ukraine in the summer.

On the day after the Jeddah talks, Russia announced the recapture of Sudzha, the main city held by Ukraine since its Kursk incursion, and Putin himself (in battle fatigues) made his first visit since then. Why, from Moscow’s perspective, would it agree to a ceasefire, given how close it was not only to restoring Russia’s honour in Kursk, but depriving Ukraine of a territorial bargaining counter in the negotiations that must surely come. Putin has not, of course, accepted the ceasefire as proposed, which also gives Russia time to complete its recapture of occupied territory in the Kursk region.

It is not at all clear either how keen Russia will be to join any proposed talks. But the pressure to do so is likely to be considerable, given the frenetic pace of recent diplomatic activity. This week has seen not just the Jeddah meeting between US and Ukrainian officials, but two meetings of European defence ministers in different configurations; a gathering of G7 foreign ministers in Canada, and there is a meeting to be hosted by London on Saturday of countries interested in contributing to a proposed peace-keeping “coalition of the willing”.

In the light of what Putin has said, however, it is worth considering why Moscow would reject, or challenge, the ceasefire proposal. That’s clear. It is winning the war. It can afford to carry on in the hope of improving its negotiating position. It has consistently opposed the idea of a limited ceasefire, on the grounds that it would only give Kyiv a chance to regroup, while Russia wants nothing less than a comprehensive settlement. More interesting, and complicated, are the reasons why Putin has decided not to reject the proposition out of hand and might just accept something akin to what was proposed at Jeddah, while playing as long a game as possible.

An ostensibly superficial reason would be appearances. Russia might often seem heedless of its international image, but it is not. An outright rejection of the ceasefire proposal would have cast Russia definitively as the uncooperative party, set against peace. This is clearly not – or no longer – the impression Russia cares to give. Also, Trump is not without leverage. On several occasions the US president has insisted that time is of the essence; that peace is urgent.

This was an aspect of his dispute with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, but Putin surely got the message, too. And while switching military assistance to Ukraine on and off may be a highly compelling form of leverage in relation to Ukraine, where it could well be a matter of survival, Trump is not without carrots and sticks in relation to Moscow, too. Additional sanctions have been one of the sticks. But it is the – perhaps time-limited – incentives on offer from Washington that may well have been of more significance to Putin.

Trump has in his gift several things that Putin wants: they include recognition as a great power to talk one on one with the US; readmission to the international mainstream, and – perhaps most important to Putin of all – an apparent understanding that Russia has felt threatened by Nato’s eastward advance, even as the arms control guarantees of the past have been breached or expired. Only the US is in a position to reverse this, and if Moscow passes up the opportunity for talks, it might not recur, at least for as long as Trump is in power.

Trump’s unpredictability – as evident to Moscow as to others, given the sharp swings in Trump’s relations with Zelensky – is an additional reason why the naturally cautious Putin is being even more cautious in his dealings with Trump. If Trump so chooses, he can wash his hands of Putin; if Putin burns his boats with Trump, on the other hand, he could lose all the political capital he won from his 90-minute phone call with the US president last month, and the promise that may have been given about talks on new arms control arrangements. There are all the other, more standard, pluses of ending a war that may be swaying Putin’s hand: the money that could be saved, as well as the chance to shift the economy away from its war footing, to stand down some of the reserves, and to save lives.

There has been little evidence of Putin coming under serious domestic pressure because of the war, but opinion polls, for what they are worth, suggest that more than half of the Russian public would like to end the war. So there could be both an economic and a political bonus in agreeing to a process that could lead to that end. Putin could also calculate that the ceasefire as currently proposed is better in some respects than he might have feared. It applies, for instance, to all forms of munitions and to all areas of the frontline, including the Black Sea, not just to the halt to strikes on energy infrastructure that Kyiv has at times proposed.

Of all these reasons why Moscow might be more interested in the proposed ceasefire than many supposed, I would single out the security aspects and the possibility of a wider US-Russia security agreement that could follow a negotiated end to the Ukraine war. This is not only because they will be the most important to Putin in their own right, but because Russia’s sense of insecurity was a big reason for the 2022 invasion and eliminating, or at least reducing it, is the only way Russia will cease to be a threat to Ukraine, and possibly other neighbours.

There are, of course, benefits that accrue to Trump if he can persuade Russia to the negotiating table. He comes one move closer to his desired legacy as peacemaker and that Nobel Prize. He can also focus US foreign policy more closely on China and perhaps even weaken the strengthening Russia-China bloc. A peace agreement that lessened the perceived regional threat from Russia could also reduce pressure from Europe for the US to continue underwriting its defence.

As the Russian president no doubt appreciates, however, Trump’s patience will be limited. Judging whether to engage fully in this first peace initiative for the best part of three years or to gamble on fighting on could be one of the most fateful decisions this Russian president will be called upon to make. These are very early days. The whole Jeddah initiative may fail. But at least Putin’s initial response avoided the flat-out “nyet”.