By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 4/29/25
Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to demand full control of four Ukrainian oblasts claimed by Russia as a condition for a potential peace deal, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
The report said that President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, sought to convince Putin to drop the demand and agree to a ceasefire that froze the current battle lines, but the Russian leader declined and maintained his demand for complete control of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.
The Financial Times reported last week that Putin was willing to freeze the current battle lines for a peace deal, but the Kremlin quickly signaled that this wasn’t the case.
Ukraine has also appeared to reject the conditions of a US proposal for a potential peace deal. The Bloomberg report said that negotiations are now at an impasse as an agreement seems less and less likely.
When Russian and Ukrainian officials held peace talks in the early days of Russia’s invasion in 2022, Russia’s main demand was for Ukrainian neutrality. Those efforts were discouraged by the US, and later that year, Russia declared its annexation of the four Ukrainian oblasts and added the recognition of that territory as Russia to its demands to end the war.
Since Russia has the momentum on the battlefield, it’s unlikely that it would accept a peace deal with terms dictated by the US. If the negotiations fall apart, it remains unclear if the Trump administration would continue fueling the war by arming Ukraine. As time goes on, the terms of a settlement will likely get less favorable for Ukraine.
On Monday, Russia declared a three-day ceasefire starting on May 8, but Ukraine rejected the idea and proposed a 30-day truce. Russia has dismissed the Ukrainian counteroffer and is casting doubt on whether the three-day ceasefire will hold.
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Moscow ready to seek ‘balance of interests’ with Ukraine and US – Lavrov
RT, 4/27/25
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rebuked CBS host in an interview on Sunday repeating that Moscow is ready to seek a “balance of interests” both with Ukraine and with the US. The network’s journalist Margaret Brennan has said that she haven’t heard from the top diplomat that Moscow “is willing to make any concession on anything to date.”
“No, my brief answer is you are wrong,” Lavrov told Brennan.
“I have been emphasizing repeatedly, in relation to Ukraine, in relation to strategic relations with the United States, I have been emphasizing our readiness to seek balance of interests. If- if this is not what your station considers readiness for negotiations, then I don’t know how to be even less eloquent in trying to be brief in my answers,” he added.
Lavrov confirmed that Russia is continuing contacts with Washington regarding Ukraine and welcomed US President Donald Trump’s efforts to mediate.
“There are several signs that we are moving in the right direction,” Lavrov said. He emphasized that Russia demands guarantees that any ceasefire “would not be used again to beef up Ukrainian military” and that arms supplies to Ukraine should stop.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held lengthy talks on Friday with US special envoy Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin. Presidential adviser Yury Ushakov described the meeting as “constructive and very useful,” adding that the discussion touched on the idea of resuming direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.
Trump, commenting on the state of the negotiations, said Ukraine and Russia “should now meet, at very high levels, to ‘finish it off.’ Most of the major points are agreed to.”
In the interview, Lavrov reiterated Russia’s position on Crimea, stating, “Russia does not negotiate [over] its own territory,” and praised President Trump for acknowledging the peninsula’s status.
Crimea “will stay with Russia” in any peace deal, Trump told Time Magazine in an article published on Friday. He said that even Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky understands this. “It’s been with them [Russia] for a long time,” the US president stated, noting that Russia had its submarines there “long before any period that we’re talking about” and that the majority of Crimeans speak Russian.
Russian officials have repeatedly said that Moscow is open to a negotiated solution, but have emphasized that any agreement must reflect the territorial realities on the ground and address the root causes of the conflict.
Zelensky insisted on Wednesday that Kiev would never officially recognize Crimea as Russian. Trump sharply rebuked that statement as “very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago.”