MOSCOW —President Donald Trump's special envoy tasked with negotiating an end toRussia's war in Ukraine, as well as his son-in-law, faced a daunting task in Moscow on Tuesday.
Nearly four years after Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of his smaller neighbor, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are grappling with an empowered Russia, plus Ukraine on the back foot both on and off the battlefield. Kyiv's troops, facing a dire manpower crisis, cling onto strategic hubs, and amajor corruption scandalhas shaken President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government and seen his top negotiator removed.
Witkoff, the man whom Washington has sent to negotiate with Putin this week, is viewed with suspicion by Kyiv and its allies aftera leaked phone callsuggested he was advising Moscow on how to deal with Trump, according to a transcript published by Bloomberg News.
In addition,a leaked 28-point plan proposed by the U.S. last monthwas widely deemed as capitulating to Russia.
"The Kremlin simply doesn't want a deal that's anything short of what it wants," such as a watered-down security guarantee for Ukraine and territorial concessions by Kyiv, said Michael A. Horowitz, an independent geopolitical and security analyst who has followed the war closely.
From Ukraine's perspective, acceding to most of Russia's demands sets it up for a third invasion, "after 2014 and 2022," Horowitz added, referring to Russia's military backing of separatists in Ukraine's east in 2014 and the full-scale invasion eight years later.
The 'three pillars'
Putin has never hidden his hard-line demands.
He has sought the capture of all of Ukraine's eastern industrial region of Donbas, comprising the contested Donetsk region and Russian-controlled Luhansk. (Russia holds about one-fifth of Ukraine's territory.) He has also called for Ukraine to be "demilitarized," essentially rendering the country defenseless, and a final peace settlement to be acknowledged in international law.
"There are three pillars on which we will not compromise," according to a Russian official briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. "One is the territory of the Donbas. The second is a limit on Ukraine's armed forces. The third is the recognition of territory by America and Europe."
Moscow is prepared to be flexible on certain secondary issues, the official said this week, like hundreds of billions in Russian assets frozen in Europe at the beginning of the war. Ukraine and its European allies have called for the funds to be used to boost Ukraine's shattered economy.
Trump's peace plan envisions that roughly one-third of the frozen assets, or $100 billion, would be invested in the U.S.-led efforts to rebuild Ukraine. According to the original leaked 28-point plan, the U.S. would receive 50% of the profits from this venture. No specific details have been released about the plan that was whittled down to 20 points during Sunday's talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Florida.
But Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former Putin speech writer, told NBC News he thinks Putin could be willing to compromise.
"The most important thing you need to understand is he can't afford to fall out with Trump. It would be quite suicidal," Gallyamov said. And while the Russian economy has not been devastated by the war, in the long term Putin understands that ramped-up sanctions by Trump would make economic recovery very difficult, if not impossible, he said.
"If Trump will really press him, Putin will agree to end the fighting — maybe with the calculation that he will build up strength, quickly organize some sort of provocation in the spring to blame on the Ukrainians and hit again," Gallyamov added.
A lot depends on what the Americans demand, Gallyamov said, adding that Putin may be willing to agree to a ceasefire over Christmas and New Year's.
But Putin is unlikely to truly end the war without intense pressure from the U.S., he added.
What could Putin accept?
Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Moscowfresh from talks with Ukraine in Florida this weekend, which both Washington and Kyiv deemed productive, without sharing details.
"It's the last chance for Russia to convince Witkoff, and Witkoff must convince Trump that the Russian view is the correct one," said Andrei Fedorov, Russia's former deputy foreign minister.
Putin has signaled for months, even before the diplomatic flurry caused by Trump's 28-point proposal, that he was willing to continue fighting.
In September, he said he welcomed "a certain light at the end of the tunnel" in the wake ofTrump's peace efforts in Alaska. "We'll see how the situation develops," he said at the time. "If not, we'll have to resolve all the challenges we face militarily."
He reiterated this last week, saying fighting would stop when Ukrainian troops withdraw from the territories they hold. "If they don't withdraw, we will achieve this by force," he said.
The leaked 28-point plan would force Ukraine to cede territory, including land it holds in the Donetsk region. It would limit the Ukrainian army to 600,000, down from more than 800,000 currently. It would also bar Ukraine from ever joining the NATO defense alliance — something that Kyiv has said is a nonstarter.
But according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a Berlin-based think tank, even the leaked plan did not go far enough for Putin.
The 600,000-personnel limit the plan would impose on the Ukrainian army is one sticking point, she wrote inan analysislast week. It would still leave Kyiv with the largest army in Europe.
The draft plan also did not include a total ban on long-range weapons in Ukraine, she added.
The wording is also important for the Russian leader, Stanovaya said. Putin indicated last week that he would want every word of any peace agreement to be carefully weighed, having mocked the language of the original proposal as undiplomatic and, at times, "ridiculous."
If he could write his own version of the peace plan, Horowitz said, Putin would legally claim all four Ukrainian provinces he illegally annexed in 2022, not just Donetsk and Luhansk; reduce Ukraine's army to one-tenth of its current size; complete the so-called denazification of Ukraine, which is code for a Russian say in Ukraine's future and removal of nationalist parties; and lift all sanctions.
While Putin does not necessarily think these demands would be achievable, Horowitz said, he thinks the final deal should be closer to his ideal peace than that of Ukraine — and he is prepared to wait if that's not the case.
"The problem, of course, is that this 'ideal deal' means Russia will be encouraged to invade Ukraine again — beyond what it already occupies," he added.
Keir Simmons and Natasha Lebedeva reported from Moscow. Yuliya Talmazan reported from London.
