Putin and Trump to hold talks on Ukraine very soon

Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump may soon hold talks to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth said. He believes that Trump will take into account Biden's decision that authorized Ukraine to use Western long-range missiles for strikes deep into Russia.

"Putin would never choose the next two months to go nuclear. That would forfeit the support of China that he has so diligently cultivated — and also that of the Global South, from India to Africa, and indeed most of the world. He would also wreck the relationship with Trump that both strongmen consider so quintessential,” the columnist noted.

Authorizing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to launch American missiles deep into Russia could be another attempt to provide Kyiv with support before Trump's arrival in the White House. The Republican should be grateful to Biden, who thus did him a favor, Kluth believes. The Trump administration will not have to escalate, and Donald Trump will open the door for negotiations in 2025, the columnist believes.

A Reuters report said that Putin was preparing for Trump's return to the White House. The Russian president is supposedly ready to enter into negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, the agency said. Yet, the Russian leader rules out a possibility of giving up on most of the territory that was captured in more than two and a half years of war.

Various Russian sources said that Putin is ready to "freeze the conflict." This means that the borders would be preserved on the current line of contact. The Russian president would be ready to make small concessions by withdrawing the Russian army from territories under his control in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv (Nikolaev) regions.

Importantly, the Reuters report does not indicate that Putin is now ready to do something that has not been reported before. According to Western experts, Putin is ready to end the war in Ukraine on his own terms that do not coincide with Ukraine's conditions at all.

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"On conducting a special military operation" was a televised broadcast by Russian president Vladimir Putin on 24 February 2022, announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It addressed the citizens of Russia and Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Russia and Ukraine, and the international community. Putin announced that Russia was launching a "special military operation" to defend the Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine—the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic—under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Russian elements in the regions had been at war with Ukraine since 2014, and Russia had recently become the first state to recognize them as independent. Putin claimed that Ukraine had been committing genocide against Russian speakers in the region; that Ukraine's government were neo-Nazis under Western control; that Ukraine was developing nuclear weapons; and that NATO was building up military infrastructure in Ukraine, threatening Russia. These allegations were widely rejected as untrue. Putin said that Russia was acting in self-defense, that its goal was the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine, and claimed that Russia had no plans to occupy Ukrainian land. He threatened severe consequences for any country that intervened. The operation began immediately after Putin's announcement.