Russia lays out demands for talks with US on Ukraine, sources say

By Erin Banco and Jonathan Landay

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia has presented the U.S. with a list of demands for a deal to end its war against Ukraine and reset relations with Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It is not clear what exactly Moscow included on its list or whether it is willing to engage in peace talks with Kyiv prior to their acceptance. Russian and American officials discussed the terms during in-person and virtual conversations over the last three weeks, the people said.

They described the Kremlin's terms as broad and similar to demands it previously has presented to Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO.

Those earlier terms included no NATO membership for Kyiv, an agreement not to deploy foreign troops in Ukraine and international recognition of President Vladimir Putin's claim that Crimea and four provinces belong to Russia.

Russia, in recent years, also has demanded the U.S. and NATO address what it has called the "root causes" of the war, including NATO's eastward expansion.

U.S. President Donald Trump is awaiting word from Putin on whether he will agree to a 30-day truce that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he would accept as a first step toward peace talks.

Putin's commitment to a potential ceasefire agreement is still uncertain, with details yet to be finalized.

Some U.S. officials, lawmakers and experts fear that Putin, a former KGB officer, would use a truce to intensify what they say is an effort to divide the U.S., Ukraine and Europe and undermine any talks.

The Russian embassy in Washington and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed this week's meeting in Saudi Arabia between U.S. and Ukrainian officials as constructive, and said a potential 30-day ceasefire with Russia could be used to draft a broader peace deal.

Moscow has raised many of these same demands over the last two decades, some making their way into formal negotiations with the U.S. and Europe.

Most recently, Moscow discussed them with the Biden administration in a series of meetings in late 2021 and early 2022 as tens of thousands of Russian troops sat on Ukraine’s border, awaiting the order to invade.

They included demands that would constrain U.S. and NATO military operations from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

While rejecting some of the terms, the Biden administration sought to forestall the invasion by engaging with Russia on several of them, according to U.S. government documents reviewed by Reuters and multiple former U.S. officials.

The effort failed and Russia attacked on February 24, 2022.

U.S. and Russian officials in recent weeks have said that a draft agreement discussed by Washington, Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul in 2022 could be a starting point for peace talks. The agreement never went through.

In those talks, Russia demanded that Ukraine give up its NATO ambitions and accept a permanent nuclear-free status. It also demanded a veto over actions by countries that wanted to assist Ukraine in the event of war.

The Trump administration has not explained how it is approaching its negotiations with Moscow. The two sides are engaged in two separate conversations: one on resetting U.S.-Russia relations and the other on a Ukraine peace agreement.

The administration appears to be divided on how to proceed.

U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who is helping lead the discussion with Moscow, last month on CNN described the Istanbul talks as “cogent and substantive negotiations” and said that they could be “a guidepost to get a peace deal done.”

But Trump's top Ukraine and Russia envoy, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, told a Council on Foreign Relations audience last week that he did not see the Istanbul agreement as a starting point.

“I think we have to develop something entirely new,” he said.

OLD DEMANDS

Experts say Russia's demands likely are not only intended to shape an eventual agreement with Ukraine, but also to be the basis of accords with its Western supporters.

Russia has made similar demands of the U.S. over the last two decades – demands that would limit the West’s ability to build a stronger military presence in Europe and potentially allow Putin to expand his influence in the continent.

“There’s no sign that the Russians are willing to make any concessions,” said Angela Stent, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was the top U.S. intelligence analyst for Russia and Eurasia. “The demands haven’t changed at all. I think they are not really interested in peace or a meaningful ceasefire.”

In their effort to forestall what U.S. intelligence officials concluded was an imminent Russian invasion, senior Biden administration officials engaged with Russian counterparts on three of the Kremlin's demands, according to the U.S. government documents reviewed by Reuters.

They were a ban on military exercises by U.S. and other NATO forces on the territories of new alliance members and a ban on U.S. intermediate-range missile deployments in Europe or elsewhere within range of Russian territory, according to the documents.

The Russians also sought to bar military exercises by the U.S. or NATO from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia, the documents showed.

"These are the same Russian demands that have been made since 1945," said Kori Schake, a former Pentagon official who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. "With the behavior of the Trump administration in recent weeks, Europeans aren’t just scared we’re abandoning them, they’re afraid we’ve joined the enemy."

(Reporting by Erin Banco in New York and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Don Durfee and Diane Craft)