Moscow reveals Putin is ready to debate Ukraine peace cope with Trump – and the phrases required to finish the battle that has introduced Europe to the brink of WW3

Moscow has revealed that Vladimir Putin is prepared to discuss a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Donald Trump and the terms required to end the bloody conflict.

The Russian leader is reportedly open to conversing with the US President-elect but has ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, according to five sources cited by Reuters.

In the first detailed reporting of what tyrant Putin would accept in any deal brokered by Trump, the five unnamed current and former Russian officials said the Kremlin could broadly agree to freeze the conflict along the front lines.

Putin said this month that any ceasefire deal should reflect the ‘realities’ on the ground but that he feared a short-lived truce which would only allow the West to rearm Ukraine.

‘If there is no neutrality, it is difficult to imagine the existence of any good-neighbourly relations between Russia and Ukraine,’ Putin told the Valdai discussion group on November 7.

‘Why? Because this would mean that Ukraine will be constantly used as a tool in the wrong hands and to the detriment of the interests of the Russian Federation.’

Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said of the incoming US president: ‘He is the only person who can bring both sides together in order to negotiate peace, and work towards ending the war and stopping the killing.’ 

But earlier this year, in June, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war.

One is that Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions.

While Russia will not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO, or the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil, it is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv, according to the five officials.

Other Ukrainian concessions the Kremlin could push for include Kyiv agreeing to limit the size of its armed forces and committing not to restrict the use of the Russian language, the people said.   

The second is that Ukraine must withdraw all of its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.

Russia controls 18 per cent of Ukraine including all of Crimea, a peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80 per cent of the Donbas – the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

It also holds just under three per cent of the Kharkiv region and a sliver of Mykolaiv.

In total, Russia has over 110,000 square km of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine holds about 650 square km of Russia’s Kursk region.

There may be room for negotiation over the precise carve-up of the four eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, according to three of the sources, with Moscow currently controlling a large chunk of Ukraine and advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.

Domestically, Putin could sell a ceasefire deal that saw Russia hold onto most of the territory of the eastern regions as a victory that ensured the defence of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and safeguarded the landbridge to Crimea, according to one of the sources.

The future of Crimea itself is not up for discussion, all the Russian officials said.

Russia may also be open to withdrawing from the relatively small patches of territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in the north and south of Ukraine, two of the officials said.

When asked what a possible ceasefire might look like, two of the Russian sources referred to a draft agreement that was almost approved in April 2022 after talks in Istanbul, and which Putin has referred to in public as a possible basis for a deal.

Under that draft, Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

It comes as the British Army fired its new Archer Mobile Howitzer system for the first time on Monday, only 70 miles from Russia’s border, in Exercise Lightning Strike.

It makes up part of NATO’s wider Dynamic Front 25 series, which will take place across five countries and marks the alliance’s largest-ever artillery exercise in Europe.

One of the Russian officials said there would be no agreement unless Ukraine received security guarantees, adding: ‘The question is how to avoid a deal that locks the West into a possible direct confrontation with Russia one day.’

But two of the sources told Reuters that outgoing US President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire American ATACMS missiles deep into Russia could complicate and delay any settlement – and stiffen Moscow’s demands as hardliners push for a bigger chunk of Ukraine. 

On Tuesday, Kyiv used the missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time, according to Moscow which decried the move as a major escalation.

A fiery explosion at an ammunition depot in Karachev around 75 miles from the Ukrainian border in Russia’s Bryansk region lit up the night sky yesterday morning on what was the 1,000th day of war in Ukraine.

The reports emerged within minutes of the Kremlin threatening a ‘nuclear response’ should Ukraine hit targets on Russian soil with Western-supplied long-range munitions.

‘The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against it with the use of conventional weapons,’ Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Russia yesterday.

His statement followed Putin’s approval of an updated nuclear doctrine that allows his strategic forces to deploy nuclear weapons if Russian or Belarusian territory is threatened by a non-nuclear nation supported by a nuclear power.

Threats that could make Russia’s leadership consider a nuclear strike include an attack with conventional missiles, drones or other aircraft, according to the updated document.

A Ukrainian strike on Russian territory with US-supplied missiles meets these criteria, raising fears that Moscow may now consider a dramatic escalation in the conflict.

If no ceasefire is agreed, two sources told Reuters, then Russia will fight on.

‘Putin has already said that freezing the conflict will not work in any way,’ Peskov said, just hours before the Russians reported the ATACMS strikes.

‘And the missile authorisation is a very dangerous escalation on the part of the United States.’