Zelenskyy pressured to find ways to negotiate with Putin

After almost 1,000 days resisting the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s allies are pushing Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider new ways to lure Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table as they seek an end to the fighting.

Donald Trump will return to the White House in January pledging a quick end to the war. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Putin to engage in peace talks during a phone call on Friday. France’s Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that he’ll speak to the Russian leader when the time is right.

Two European officials said there is an increasingly recognition that Zelenskyy will have to compromise with Putin because it has become clear that neither side can secure a decisive victory.

On the eve of the G-20, which will be President Joe Biden’s last in office, the U.S. decided to authorize long-range missile strikes on Russian territory in response to North Korea ramping up support for Putin. The idea behind that shift is also that it will help bolster Zelenskyy’s position before Trump takes office so that he can approach eventual negotiations with a strengthened hand.

The Kremlin condemned the U.S. decision and Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that allowing Ukrainians to use these Army Tactical Missile Systems would trigger “a new round of tension,” the state-run Tass news service reported.

Zelenskyy has long pleaded with allies to allow the use of western weapons to strike military targets deep inside Russia. But he was caught off guard when the decision was leaked on Sunday: “Such things shouldn’t be announced,” he said in a video address. The permission also falls short of Ukraine’s expectations by only allowing for strikes to be conducted against targets in the Kursk region, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be named.

The White House didn’t explicitly confirm the decision, but deputy national security advisor John Finer said the deployment of North Korean troops into the war had escalated matters. “We’ve been clear to the Russians that we would respond to that,” he said.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the latest NATO member to want to get in on the discussion. He’s set to present his proposal to freeze the conflict on current lines when Group of 20 leaders meet in Rio de Janeiro Monday, according to people familiar with his plans.

The sudden clamor for a settlement shows the renewed urgency from Ukraine’s allies who are trying to get ahead of Trump’s return and the possibility of drastic cuts in U.S. support. With North Korean troops entering the fray on the Russian side, there is growing appetite to halt a conflict which has brought destruction to vast tracts of Ukraine, consumed hundreds of billions of dollars in financial aid and foreign weapons and upended geopolitical relationships in Europe and around the world.

Putin, though, has shown little inclination to consider a truce, despite massive Russian military casualties. The Russian leader told Scholz last week that he has always been open to talks but that any agreement would have to take into account Russia’s security concerns and its territorial gains. The Kremlin is likely to interpret the growing pressure on Zelenskyy as evidence that its attritional strategy is paying off.

China and Brazil, who will also be at the summit in Rio, have been calling for an international conference involving both sides since May.

Zelenskyy was turned away from the G-20 after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ignored his increasingly desperate appeals for an invitation. Putin opted not to attend, saying last month that his presence would “disrupt” the summit because of an arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court.

The language on Ukraine in the near-final communique will make Zelenskyy and his G-7 allies unhappy. It’s similar to what had been agreed last year in New Delhi when the condemnation of Russia’s invasion was dropped to his consternation.

Over the weekend, Russia launched one of its largest missile and drone strikes that disrupted power and water supplies but at the G-20 there is opposition even to a call to stop bombarding energy infrastructure — something that had made it in the 2023 statement.

Zelenskyy’s own formula for peace is based on obtaining a clear path to NATO membership and security guarantees for protection until it joins.

Erdogan will propose, by contrast, that Zelenskyy agrees to delay discussions on joining the alliance for at least 10 years as a concession to Putin, according to people briefed on his thinking, asking not to be named talking about private conversations.

The Turkish proposal envisages the creation of a demilitarized zone in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine where Russia has controlled large swathes of territory since 2014. Erdogan will suggest that international troops could be deployed there as an additional guarantee and that Ukraine would be assured of military supplies to compensate for agreeing to be left out of NATO.

Turkish officials recognize that such a proposal will be difficult for Ukraine to accept, but they believe it’s the most realistic approach. They would aim to park discussions about the long-term fate of occupied territories to focus on securing a stable ceasefire first.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said those details aren’t accurate, without elaborating. “Turkey supports initiatives to end the war,” he added.

The overall formula might appeal to some of Kyiv’s allies who are queasy that full NATO membership for Ukraine would risk bringing them into direct conflict with the Kremlin.

Western thinking has shifted since North Korean troops appeared on the battlefield to support Putin’s forces and that shaped Biden’s views on potentially allowing missile strikes on Russia. Assessments by some G-20 nations suggest North Korea could eventually send Russia as many as 100,000 troops.

Erdogan hopes he may be able to convince Zelenskyy to attend peace talks in Istanbul because he’s seen intelligence suggesting that Ukraine could lose a lot more territory in the next few months unless the fighting is halted, according to the people briefed on his thinking. But the outlook on the battlefield also offers Putin an incentive to keep fighting.

“No matter what Putin says, he doesn’t want peace and is not ready to negotiate it,” Macron told reporters on the tarmac in Buenos Aires as he prepared to depart for Rio. “Putin’s intention is to intensify the combat, we’ve seen this for weeks.”

-------

With assistance from Samy Adghirni, Julien Ponthus and Firat Kozok.