Russia Matters, 2/14/25

1. This week, Trump has confirmed earlier reports that he and Putin will meet in Saudi Arabia, while also revealing that the two leaders may then visit each other’s countries. “In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re gonna meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time, we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something done,” Trump said, according to Politico. A date for the meeting “hasn’t been set,” but it will happen in the “not too distant future,” Trump said of the summit with the Russian leader, whom his predecessor refused to meet or directly negotiate with after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Last week saw senior Russian MP Leonid Slutsky reveal the meeting could take place sometime in February or March, while Russia’s Kommersant reported that Russia is reportedly considering Saudi Arabia as a potential location for the meeting. Meanwhile, Trump and Putin have already chosen officials that will negotiate on their behalf on ending the Russian-Ukrainian war, preserving strategic stability and other issues. “I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to lead the negotiations, which, I feel strongly, will be successful,” Trump said on Feb. 12, thus excluding his own envoy on the conflict, Keith Kellogg. In his turn, Putin is assembling what Bloomberg has described as “a heavyweight team with decades of experience in high-stakes negotiation.” They include Yuri Ushakov, the chief Kremlin foreign-policy adviser; his top spymaster, Sergei Naryshkin; and Kirill Dmitriev, a financier educated at Stanford and Harvard.
2. The previously anemic process of key stakeholders in the Ukraine conflict slowly signaling their evolving negotiating positions has undergone a dramatic disruption by Trump and his team this past week.Trump personally launched the disruption by announcing on Feb. 12 an “immediate” start to negotiations to end the war after having a phone conversation with Putin. The Kremlin—which has previously been denying direct contacts between Putin and Trump—confirmed Trump’s claim this time, saying the Russian leader agreed with his U.S. counterpart to “work together” toward “a long-term settlement [that] could be reached through peaceful negotiations.” Speaking prior to the Feb. 12 phone call, Trump claimed to have developed a concrete plan to end the war. But even if he did have such a plan, Zelenskyy—whom Trump would refuse to grant the status of “an equal member” of the peace process and whom Trump didn’t warn of his call to Putin until after he’d made it—denied any knowledge of it on Feb. 14. Meanwhile, some of the statements made by Trump’ top aides also indicated that there is no firm plan yet. First, Hegseth announced on Feb. 11 that “we are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine.” Then, JD Vance was quoted by WSJ as saying on Feb. 13 that the option of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate remained “on the table.”  In addition to pledging not to send troops to Ukraine, Hegseth called Ukraine’s desire for membership in NATO and a return to its pre-2014 borders unrealistic and illusionary this week. Hegseth’s remarks made some of America’s Europeanallies publicly wonder why the U.S. would “concede” on these issues ahead of negotiations rather than try to use them as bargaining chips. But even with Hegseth sending conciliatory signals to Moscow on Ukraine’s borders and NATO, it won’t be easy for Trump and his team to convince their Russian counterparts to first agree to a ceasefire and then, possibly, conclude a peace deal. For one, Putin has showed no signs so far of abandoning the conditions he has set for Russia to agree to a ceasefire.¹ Moreover, the Kremlin says it will agree to a ceasefire only if it is used to negotiate a legally-binding agreement, which would include guarantees of NATO’s non-expansion to the east. Whether such a commitment can be obtained from the alliance, which operates by consensus, is an open question. If Putin does agree to Trump’s proposal for the ceasefire, it could be secured by one of two significant upcoming dates, according to European and Ukrainian officials interviewed by FT: Easter on April 20 or May 9, when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. The key to successful peace talks could be having China join the U.S. in the peace efforts, according to Harvard’s Graham Allison. “I believe this terrible [Russian-Ukrainian] war will soon come to an end. In fact, I would bet that we will have a ceasefire within the next six months… with the help of a powerful partner: China,” Allison told Der Spiegel.
   1. Chinese officials in recent weeks have floated a proposal to the Trump team through intermediaries to hold a summit between Trump and Putin and to facilitate peacekeeping efforts after an eventual truce, people in Beijing and Washington familiar with the matter told WSJ. The Chinese offer, notably, envisions a U.S.-Russian summit without the involvement of Zelenskyy. Part of China’s proposal to assist a Russia-Ukraine peace deal involves Beijing acting as a “guarantor” by sending peacekeeping troops to the region, according to WSJ.
3. Trump has proposed a three-way meeting with the Russian and Chinese leaders to discuss nuclear arms control, according to AFP. The chief motivation would be to find ways to save money, Trump said Feb. 13. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.” In response to Trump’s statement, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, depicted China as a much smaller player among nuclear powers, compared to the United States. “As countries with the largest nuclear arsenals, the United States and Russia should earnestly fulfill their special priority responsibilities for nuclear disarmament,” Guo said. Trump has called for a trilateral ‘denuclearization’ before and Putin responded to this call by stating readiness to discuss strategic stability. China has been, however, consistently rejecting trilateral reductions.
4. In the past month, Russian forces made a net gain of 151 square miles of Ukraine’s territory (6 ½ Manhattan islands), according to the Feb. 12, 2025, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. Meanwhile in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Ukraine gained 2 square miles. According to the Ukrainian OSINT group DeepState, Russian military advances in eastern Ukraine have slowed significantly since November 2024. In November, DeepState reports Russian gains of 280 square miles, and these have declined every month since: 152 square miles in December 2024, and 126 square miles in January 2025.