Putin Talks Peace. His Missiles Say Otherwise

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rediscovered the vocabulary of peace at the precise moment his army is taking Ukraine apart, one bridge and one power station at a time.

On September 25, addressing Russian journalists, he said that every proposal for settling the four-and-a-half-year war remained on the table, then attached the condition that empties the offer of content. "We are ready for talks and to wrap them up as soon as possible, but on conditions acceptable for the Russian people," Putin said. Moscow would first assess what served its own interests.

He added that Russia had been prepared to resume talks after its parliamentary elections, that Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow had changed the calculation, and that Kyiv would have to be "made to feel" Russian retaliation before anything else could be discussed.

US President Donald J. Trump would do well to read that statement as a description of Putin's method. A leader preparing to end a war does not reserve for himself both the calendar of diplomacy and unrestricted freedom of fire. Putin, in a single appearance, claimed both, In doing so, he put negotiation where the Kremlin has always kept it, among the instruments of his war.

The confirmation came within five days. On September 30, Russia launched its heaviest combined attack on Ukraine's energy system in months. Seven people were killed, among them a 14-year-old in Vyshhorod, north of the capital. The Ukrainian military counted 285 drones incoming, along with ballistic missiles. Emergency power cuts were imposed in Kyiv and three surrounding regions for the first time since the spring, and water pressure fell across the city.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the strikes on Ukraine's energy facilities without embarrassment. On October 3, hours after another drone attack on a Dnipro crossing, in a city of three million people heading into winter, the Russian Foreign Ministry told foreign nationals and diplomatic staff to leave Ukraine and promised that the strikes on Kyiv and other cities would continue systematically. Putin had said earlier in the week that Ukraine was paying the price for its attacks on Russia and would go on paying it. Kyiv's mayor now speaks of a capital that must put itself on a war footing.

Putin's interest in negotiations seems real, but deserves to be taken only for what it buys him. An open negotiation process allows Putin time to ready harsher attacks for the winter. Like Iran's regime, it gives the appearance of cooperation without actual cooperation, and puts Ukraine under pressure to suspend its long-range strikes on refineries and ports that are doing genuine damage to Russia's revenues.

The Kremlin has made the argument in public. On September 17, the day after the US House of Representatives sent Trump legislation targeting Russia's energy and defense industries, and its shadow fleet of tankers, and authorizing tariffs of up to 100% on buyers of Russian oil, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that additional American sanctions would complicate the search for a settlement.

Trump signed the bill on September 18, and three days later, the Kremlin spokesman repeated the warning. Washington was asked to hold its fire for the sake of diplomacy; then, in early October, Russia returned to bombing Kyiv's bridges six times in an apparent attempt to cut the capital city in two and sever its supply routes.

The so-called energy truce also showed how the asymmetry works in practice. On September 14, Trump announced that Ukraine and Russia had each agreed to stop hitting the other's energy targets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky answered within hours that Ukraine was not convinced that Russia would abide by any agreement and that Kyiv would halt its own strikes once its partners could guarantee that Moscow had stopped attacking Ukraine's electric grid. Moscow never confirmed the arrangement, and 16 days later Ukraine's grid was burning.

None of that should have surprised anyone who had read what three sources close to the Kremlin described in July: Putin rebuked advisers proposing a ceasefire along the existing front, regards capturing the rest of the Donbas as a matter of principle, and is likely to escalate. Peskov's reply at the time was that Russia was ready for a peaceful resolution but had "enough capability to act independently and continue the special military operation." The conjunction "but" did the same work in July as it did on September 25.

None of this argues against talking to Putin. Great powers negotiate with adversaries because they are adversaries, and Trump is well-intended in seeking an end to the war that has become Europe's bloodiest since 1945, drained allied treasuries, killed or wounded roughly 1.4 million Russians and more than half a million Ukrainians, and raised the risk of a widening confrontation. The error would be to read Putin's presence at the negotiating table as a decision to stop the war. In 1994, Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, assuring Ukraine that if it gave up its nuclear weapons, Russia would not attack it. Ukraine, tragically, kept its part of the bargain.

The Minsk agreements of September 2014 and February 2015 produced ceasefires, monitoring missions and years of communiqués signed under French and German sponsorship. The heavy weapons, however, were never fully withdrawn and the political provisions were never implemented. In February 2022, Putin declared the agreements void, recognized separatist entities within Ukraine and invaded. Eight years of playing at process had cost Putin nothing and had given him time, which is what diplomacy without enforceable consequences reliably gives an aggressor.

A further development calls for serious caution. According to reporting published on October 3, the American-Russian discussions have widened to include a redolent multibillion-dollar sale of the international assets, refineries, oil fields and gas stations of Russia's Lukoil, which are currently under American sanctions. Putin raised the transaction himself at the Kremlin on September 5, in his meeting with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as proof that Russians could again do business with the United States!

The sale would need the approval of both governments; nothing has yet been concluded. The Trump administration says it is negotiating terms that would secure a substantial upfront payment for the United States. So, commercial "normalization" was placed on the table during the same weeks as the bombardment intensified. If sanctions relief, restraint on Ukrainian operations and restored relations with Washington can all be obtained by keeping talks alive, then for Moscow, prolonging talks is the perfect course, and a settlement can remain one meeting away indefinitely.

Trump's record as a negotiator was built on leverage; declarations never seem to have impressed him. Money, however, apparently has, such as Saudi and Qatari "investments" in America and a $400 million presidential "flying palace" jet gifted to him by Qatar.

The Abraham Accords came out of a hard reading of interests. Iran's regime, once it faced American force in place of American concern, behaved differently.

Russian, Iranian, Chinese, North Korean and Palestinian conduct should be rewarded only after sustained changes in behavior. Sanctions relief should follow only after a verified halt in escalation or hostilities. Any restraint asked of Ukraine over Russian refineries should follow only after Russia stops targeting Ukrainian bridges, apartment buildings, hospitals and power plants. The Lukoil transaction can wait until after hostilities have measurably declined. Such a policy is neither hostile to Russia nor favorable to war.

Ceasefires can exist just for press statements that protect no one and for talks that supply one side with time, money and freedom of action to lengthen the fighting. Putin likely counts on Western impatience, on US presidents who want breakthroughs and on publics who want images of the war off their screens. The law Trump signed on September 18 gives him the means to raise the price of delay. The weeks since Putin's statement supply the reason to use it.

Until Russian strikes on Ukraine stop, Putin's offers to talk remain just part of his plan for his war.

© Gatestone Institute