Amid peace talks, US says Russia still aims to reclaim former Soviet bloc
Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco And John Irish
Washington/Paris: U.S. intelligence reports continue to warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not giving up on his goals of seizing all of Ukraine and retaking parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire, even as negotiators try to end the war that would cede far less territory to Russia.
The reports, from six sources familiar with US intelligence, paint a starkly different picture than that painted by US President Donald Trump and his Ukraine peace negotiators, who say Putin wants to end the conflict. The latest of the reports is from late September.
to one of the sources.
The intelligence also contradicts the Russian leader’s denials that he is a threat to Europe.
The US findings have been consistent since Putin launched his large-scale invasion in 2022. According to sources, these largely coincide with the views of European leaders and spy agencies that Putin covets all of Ukraine and the territory of former Soviet bloc states, including members of the NATO alliance.
“The intelligence was that Putin always wanted more,” Mike Quigley, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Reuters. “The Europeans believe it. The Poles absolutely believe it. The Baltic states think they are first.”
Russia controls about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including most of Luhansk and Donetsk, which form the industrial heartland of Donbas, parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces, and the strategic Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Putin claims that Crimea and all four provinces belong to Russia. Trump pressures Kiev to withdraw forces from small part of Donetsk as part of proposed peace
The agreement is a demand that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and most Ukrainians reject, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
“The President’s team has made tremendous progress in ending the war,” a White House official said, without citing intelligence reports, and Trump stated that a peace deal was “closer than ever.”
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in an
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and the Russian embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s negotiators, son-in-law Jared Kushner and billionaire real estate developer Steve Witkoff, have been negotiating the 20-point peace plan with Ukrainian, Russian and European officials for weeks.
Although U.S. officials say they are making progress, major differences remain on territorial issues.
Kushner and Witkoff met Russian officials in Miami on Sunday (AEDT) for final talks aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, following a meeting with Ukrainian and European officials the day before.
Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev told reporters after the meeting that the talks were constructive and would continue on Monday (AEDT).
U.S., Ukrainian and European negotiators reached broad consensus at talks in Berlin last week on what four European diplomats and two sources familiar with the matter said were solid U.S.-backed guarantees for Ukraine’s security against future Russian aggression.
Those guarantees are contingent on Zelensky agreeing to cede the territory to Russia, a source and a diplomat said. But other diplomats said that was not the case and that alternatives were still being examined as Zelensky had ruled out giving up the land.
Diplomats said the guarantees, which would come into effect after the signing of the peace deal, require the deployment of a mostly European security force away from the front lines in neighboring countries and Ukraine to repel any future Russian attacks.
The Ukrainian army will be limited to 800,000, the source said. But some diplomats said Russia wanted a lower ceiling that the Americans were open to.
They said the US would provide intelligence and other support and the package would be approved by the US Senate.
Washington’s plan would also include US-backed air patrols over Ukraine, according to two sources familiar with the talks.
Zelensky was wary of the proposals on Thursday, saying: “There is one question I still cannot find an answer to: What will these security guarantees actually do?”
And it is extremely unclear whether Putin will accept such guarantees, as he has repeatedly rejected the deployment of foreign troops to Ukraine.
On Friday, Putin remained uncompromising, although he said at his annual press conference that he was ready to discuss peace. He said that his conditions must be met as his forces have advanced 6000 square kilometers this year.
It is unclear how US officials responded to Putin’s demands. Witkoff had previously claimed that Russia had the right to claim the four provinces and Crimea.
Some Trump administration officials have acknowledged that Putin may not want to settle for anything less than his initial goal of conquering Ukraine.
“I don’t know if Putin wants to make a deal or if Putin wants to take over the whole country. These are things he has said openly,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a press conference on Friday US time.
“We know what they initially wanted to achieve when the war started. They failed to achieve those goals.”
Reuters
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