Putin will not accept the ceasefire between Trump and Zelensky.

MoscowWhen someone says yes, that they'd be delighted to have dinner with you, and then comes up with every kind of objection in the world (no day is suitable for them, they don't like the restaurant, they want to choose the menu, the wine, the shirt that you'll wear, and on top of that, you'll have to pay), you don't need to have studied hermeneutics to understand that they're rejecting your proposal. A 30-day ceasefire isn't in the best interest of Vladimir Putin. like what Washington and Kiev propose for Ukraine, but he can't snub the host, Donald Trump. The Russian president will have to balance convincing the White House while stepping on the gas on the battlefield and not budging an inch on his demands.

"There will be no truce, everyone understood everything, it was said very clearly," wrote Andrei Kolesnikov of the daily newspaper on Friday. Kommersante, one of the journalists who best knows the Kremlin. State TV's star presenter, Vladimir Solovyov, spoke in a less subtle way, making a sausage on camera and asking a question: "Is our answer clear to you?"

The Kremlin's conditions

Putin was unusually candid in outlining his short-term reservations. On the one hand, he is not prepared to waste the push of his soldiers to recapture Kursk, A toothache that has forced Russia to bomb its own territory since August. On the other hand, the Kremlin and the military establishment are convinced that Ukrainian troops cannot hold out much longer and consider it a mistake to give them the chance to breathe. "Putin has recently repeated that Russia was only months away from victory in the First World War when the Bolsheviks withdrew from them on disastrous terms," notes analyst Aleksandr Baunov.

Putin was also blunt when he insisted that, from Russia's perspective, the only ceasefire that makes sense is one that guarantees "long-term peace" and eliminates "the root causes" of the conflict. This is tantamount to saying that he has no intention of stopping fighting until he achieves the objectives that led him to invade Ukraine.

"The fundamental causes"

It is at this point that the Russian president's narrative becomes mystified, confusing the stated objectives (the form, the excuse) with the unstated objectives (the substance, the essence). "Putin is not fighting for territory," explains journalist Leonid Ragozin, who asserts that Moscow was willing to accept a peace agreement in March 2022, before it had yet to annex the occupied regions. The Russian leader aspires to strangle Ukraine, so full control of the four eastern provinces, plus a demilitarized strip that would include the city of Odessa, would severely limit its access to the sea.

The condition that Ukraine not join NATO is not enough for Russia because it is not a real threat. Both European countries and the United States have opposed fulfilling Zelensky's request, and therefore it is difficult to argue that Ukraine jeopardizes "long-term peace." Analyst Peter Dickinson sums it up this way: "Putin is using NATO for his war against Ukraine's continued existence as a state."

What Putin doesn't want is for Ukraine to leave his sphere of influence, a red line for the Kremlin. Most experts agree that what truly worries Putin is Ukraine's rapprochement with Europe and its political, social, cultural, and emotional distancing from its eastern brothers. The Russian president considers Ukraine to be part of Russia and even wrote a thesis. It is titledOn the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, maintains that Lenin "invented" Ukraine and denies its identity.

One of the great contemporary Russian dissident writers, Mikhail Shishkin, explains that the Russian regime seeks to maintain control and influence over neighboring nations to perpetuate its power. In this way, Putin cannot accept that Zelensky is not like the Belarusian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who knows how to interpret his subordinate role and embraces Russian affiliation. Belarus can be a sovereign state because it does not represent a threat to Russia. Ukraine, since 2014, has been a threat because it began a political process of self-determination. At that time, Putin's former advisor Andrei Illarionov already predicted that the Russian president would militarily intervene in Ukraine to install a sympathetic government.

The problem is not that Zelensky is an "illegitimate" president or that his term has expired; The problem is that it doesn't submit to the Kremlin. Therefore, according to analyst Tatiana Stanovaia, Putin will do everything he can to ensure that the negotiations with the United States address this "fundamental cause" of the conflict, disguised as "denazification." As long as the Kremlin doesn't ensure it can force regime change in Ukraine, it will have no incentive to accept a ceasefire.

Will Trump give in?

The question is whether Trump will compromise, as he has done so far, on Russia's demands or pressure Putin to accept a truce on the original terms. The US president has little room to corner the Kremlin leader, who feels no urgency for peace, even though the White House thinks he does. According to Baunov, the best thing Trump can do is "show him the carrot rather than the stick," that is, insert the ceasefire agreement into a pact that goes beyond Ukraine and serves to fully restore relations with the United States. For her part, Stanovaia suggests that Putin might accept a shorter ceasefire if Trump agrees to begin discussing his maximalist demands.

Putin cannot afford anything resembling a defeat, but neither can Trump. So far, the US president has shown much more sensitivity to Russian arguments than to Ukrainian ones, as if the fate of two large nations were worth more than that of one small one. This week, one of the Kremlin's closest propagandists wrote contemptuously: "Cowboys don't care about horse problems."