Russia will not accept a reported Turkey-formulated proposal to end to the fighting in Ukraine after nearly 1,000 days of war, the Kremlin said on Monday, as the prospect of a ceasefire that had long seemed unrealistic looms over the horizon with a new U.S. presidency.
Bloomberg reported on Sunday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was preparing to present a plan to fellow G20 leaders, which would freeze the war in Ukraine along the front lines currently snaking for hundreds of miles through the country. The Turkish leader would lay out the plans during the summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, the outlet reported.
“The option of freezing the line of military conflict is a priori unacceptable for the Russian side,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, responding to the report.
Turkey, a long-standing NATO member, has maintained links with Russia through a tricky balancing act. Ankara has styled itself a peacemaker, signaling support for Ukraine’s bid to join NATO while keeping lines of communication open with Moscow and expressing interest in joining the currently Russia-led BRICS group of nations.
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool
Turkey occupies a strategic position south of Ukraine, controlling access to the Black Sea via the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. This has limited Russia’s ability to move submarines and warships in and out of the Black Sea.
Unlike other NATO leaders, Erdogan has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout Europe’s largest land war since World War II. Erdogan has described his relationship with the Kremlin leader as built on “joint understanding, mutual trust and respect.”
Putin has not discussed the proposal with Erdogan, Peskov said, adding the Kremlin did “not yet have any information on this matter.” Newsweek has reached out to the Turkish presidential office for comment via email.
The Russian leader will not budge on the conditions he laid out earlier this year for a ceasefire, Peskov said in remarks reported by Russia’s Interfax news agency.
Back in June, Putin said he would consider a ceasefire or a freeze to the war in Ukraine if Kyiv abandoned its hopes of joining NATO and withdrew its troops from the regions of Ukraine that Russia has said it has annexed.
Moscow has controlled Crimea, to the south of mainland Ukraine, since 2014, and declared in September 2022 that it had annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions collectively known as the Donbas, as well as the southern Ukrainian Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
The Kremlin’s grip on these regions is not internationally recognized. Kyiv has vowed to reclaim them.
Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, has insisted Kyiv needs to join NATO as soon as possible and has refused to cede territory to Moscow.
Attitudes appear to be changing around a ceasefire as preparations for President-elect Donald Trump to step back into the Oval Office get underway. Trump has vowed to turn off the tap of military aid to Ukraine—which Kyiv relies on—and to end the war in a day.
Officials in Europe fear this may mean the president-elect will do a deal with the Kremlin that goes against the best interests of NATO’s eastern flank and Ukraine itself.
One idea floated among officials in Trump’s camp could see Ukraine pledging not to join NATO for at least 20 years, while Washington continues funneling weapons into the country to dissuade Russia from launching fresh attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
The conflict would become frozen, with Russia keeping a grip on roughly a fifth of Ukraine. A demilitarized zone would mark Kyiv’s and Moscow’s control down the current front lines, likely policed by European forces.
Erdogan will propose that Ukraine delays talks on joining NATO for at least a decade, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed people briefed on the president’s thinking. The plan will feature a demilitarized zone in eastern Ukraine, where international troops could be placed, according to the report.
In a departure from the position adopted by many Western NATO leaders, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Putin late last week for the first time in roughly two years.
“Russia must show willingness to negotiate with Ukraine—with the aim of achieving a just and lasting peace,” Scholz said following the call. A Kremlin readout said the German leader had requested the telephone conversation, which was criticized by several NATO nations.
Two anonymous European officials told Bloomberg that there was a growing sense that Ukraine’s Zelensky would have to negotiate with Putin as the war drags on. Russia has been steadily gaining territory in eastern Ukraine since the start of the year, while both Moscow and Kyiv have looked for ways to replenish their exhausted forces on the front lines.
