Putin’s insatiable ambition: What the Kremlin really wants from peace talks — NV analysis

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hopes the next round of trilateral talks between Ukraine, the United States and Russia will take place on March 5–6. The meeting was initially scheduled for Abu Dhabi, but because Iran is launching ballistic missiles at the United Arab Emirates, the venue may be changed.

Zelenskyy said the meeting must take place and that Ukraine supports it. “The meeting is important, and the results are important,” he said.

“But these negotiations have no chance,” experienced diplomat Volodymyr Ohryzko, a former Ukrainian foreign minister, told NV.

Expectations for the new round remain high. The talks were preliminarily expected to define the parameters of a summit of the three countries’ leaders to address the most contentious issue — control over Donbas.

Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff and one of the country’s key negotiators, recently said in an interview that the Kremlin’s immediate goal is to gain control over the unoccupied parts of Donetsk Oblast. Even though Russia has agreed to the American model of security guarantees for Ukraine, Budanov said, the differences between the sides remain deep. A leaders’ summit has not yet been agreed.

Reuters recently surveyed the heads of five European intelligence services, who unanimously said the Kremlin’s strategic goals have not changed and that negotiations for Moscow are merely a bargaining tool. One source described the process as “negotiation theatre.”

Alexander Baunov, a Russian analyst at the Carnegie Endowment who now lives in Europe, said the sides are speaking “in different rooms.” With Russia, the Americans are discussing a ceasefire in exchange for territory; with Ukraine, they are discussing those same territories in exchange for guarantees.

“But the Kremlin’s real objective is not territory and not guarantees,” Baunov told NV. “Moscow wants to embed in any agreement the right to decide who and how will govern Ukraine after the war. In other words, it wants political control.”

Control, not land

What Moscow seeks does not fit the formula of “land in exchange for peace.” Andrei Pertsev, an opposition Russian journalist who has long covered the Kremlin’s internal workings, believes Putin wants to turn Ukraine into another element of the so-called Union State, as has effectively happened with Belarus. For that, the Russian dictator needs a fully controlled regime in Kyiv, after which the Kremlin would move toward de facto absorption of the country.

That is why, in Moscow’s negotiating demands, control over Donbas is not the central issue. Instead, the Kremlin is pushing for early elections to be held even before a peace agreement is signed. Pertsev argues that Putin believes he can use political technology to impose a candidate favorable to Moscow on Ukrainian voters. That candidate could be Viktor Medvedchuk, a politician accused of treason, or former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov — both of whom reside in Russia. According to Pertsev, the Kremlin now needs to create conditions in Ukraine for a political crisis and a collapse of the front.

Even on elections, Moscow has created room to prolong negotiations. It is proposing only one day of “silence” before voting, while Ukraine insists on at least two months, in line with its legislation.

Russia is also demanding that all political forces be allowed to participate in elections and is telling Trump that Kyiv is blocking “opposition” politicians. There are additional issues involving media access, candidate registration and the selection and powers of observers. The number of potential friction points is so large that bargaining around them could continue indefinitely — a dynamic that favors the Kremlin.

Moscow is also raising issues related to the “rights” of the Russian language, the Moscow church and media. Baunov said Russia wants to become a “guarantor state” for security with the right of armed intervention. He compared that approach to the “Cyprus precedent,” when Turkey was designated a guarantor of the island state’s status quo and later used that status to deploy troops and annex a third of Cyprus.

The Zelenskyy factor

Elections in Ukraine are also important to the Kremlin because of Zelenskyy personally. For four years, Russian propaganda has equated its war of aggression with the “Great Patriotic War” and portrayed Ukraine’s sixth president as the central villain.

“For Putin, sitting down with Zelenskyy [at the negotiating table] is equivalent to debating [opposition leader Alexei] Navalny,” Baunov said, referring to the opposition figure who was reportedly killed in a Russian penal colony. “That image is impossible for Putin.” The Kremlin, he added, cannot declare victory in its “patriotic war” if “Hitler” remains in power.

According to Baunov, Putin is in no rush to end the negotiation process. He has “survived” the Chechen wars, the 2008 financial crisis, the war with Georgia, the seizure of Crimea and sanctions — and each time emerged strengthened. That history has reinforced his confidence that “victory” is simply a matter of time.

“He has this confidence that victory is just three steps away,” Baunov said. “To end it now, without taking those three steps, would look like a lost historic opportunity.”

Eric Ciaramella, a former U.S. National Security Council official, told The Washington Post that the Kremlin may be seeking a weak agreement for Ukraine without a real enforcement mechanism for a ceasefire. Such a “peace,” he argued, would not end the war but repackage it.

Experts interviewed by NV said Russia’s state apparatus — from propaganda to education — is working to ensure that the domestic public does not conclude that four years of war were based on false premises. In that logic, negotiations serve not to achieve peace but to cover up failure at the front — during the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin has not achieved its strategic objectives — with an outcome that can be framed as victory.

Power before peace

If the Kremlin’s goal is control rather than peace, Ukraine’s response should focus not on accelerating negotiations but on shifting the balance of power, Ohryzko said.

Russia will change its position only when it feels real pain, he argued. That would require destroying infrastructure tied to Russia’s military-industrial complex and targeting its oil and gas sector.

Pertsev offered a similar assessment. Only when Putin confronts a deep economic crisis or serious battlefield setbacks will he move toward genuine peace talks, he said.

“It is possible this could happen by summer or fall,” Pertsev said. “For now, the Kremlin is focused on a spring military campaign.”

At present, the military track of negotiations appears more substantive, as even Russian generals recognize the limits of their capabilities and understand they will not capture Zaporizhzhya or Kharkiv. The political track, however, raises the most doubts, as Moscow is embedding control mechanisms designed to outlast any ceasefire.

In early March, Budanov said negotiations were entering a final stage. “The talks are not simple, but we are definitely moving forward and approaching the moment when all sides will have to make final decisions: continue this war or move toward peace,” he said.

The moment he described may be approaching.