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Ukraine Project
The Kremlin is weaponizing ongoing ceasefire negotiations and deliberately misrepresenting the status and terms of a future ceasefire agreement in order to delay and undermine negotiations for a settlement to the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the ceasefire proposal that the United States and Ukraine recently agreed upon in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and offered an alternative proposal that undermines US President Donald Trump's stated goal of securing a lasting peace in Ukraine.
Russia continues to publicly claim that it wants peace while offering no concessions of its own in sharp contrast with the concessions Ukraine has already offered. Russian officials continue to capitalize on the Trump administration's statements and actions in an attempt to divide the United States and Europe.
The Trump administration suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine, one of many demands the Kremlin has made of the US, Ukraine, and Ukraine's other supporters.
Recent Russian official statements in response to the proposed US-Ukraine mineral deal indicate that the Kremlin is trying to sabotage the deal through narratives targeting Ukrainian and American audiences. The Kremlin is claiming that this mineral deal does not benefit Ukraine while also claiming that Russia can make a better offer to the United States, indicating that Moscow sees the deal as harmful to its objectives.
US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are planning to meet at the White House on February 28, likely to sign a US-Ukraine mineral deal. A draft agreement of the deal published ahead of the meeting does not provide US security assistance or security guarantees to Ukraine, however.
US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff referred to the early 2022 Istanbul protocols as offering "guideposts" for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine on February 23. An agreement based on those protocols would be a capitulation document.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly trying to optimize the Russian negotiations delegation to be most effective with the specific individuals whom the United States chooses for its negotiation delegation, likely in an effort to extract maximum concessions from the United States.
The Kremlin reiterated its demands that Ukraine cede additional territory in eastern and southern Ukraine to Russia and disband the Ukrainian military in the future while continuing to message that the Kremlin is unwilling to make territorial concessions itself in any future peace negotiations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is attempting to create conditions to frame Putin as the victor over US President Donald Trump in negotiations.