Is Russia getting ready to do a deal on Ukraine?

In some ways, Vladimir Putin was always going to win the war in Ukraine. So murkily defined are the goals of his invasion that it’s entirely up to him to decide what victory looks like. Having told Russians that their country is under attack, facing an existential threat from the West, anything short of losing Moscow can be sold as a success to the public – and with near-total control over the media, many back home will believe it.

Now, with the Russian offensive in Eastern Ukraine slowing to a grinding crawl, there are claims the Kremlin could be laying the foundations to announce “mission accomplished”. On Monday, the Daily Mirror published details of a report seen by Western intelligence agencies that alleges a top Russian official has revealed a willingness to begin talks. “A representative of Putin’s inner-circle sent a signal about the desire to negotiate,” the article states.

Many will see the purported development as an unsurprising one. Russia’s armed forces have taken a battering during the so-called “special operation,” and have struggled to replace their losses and mobilise the public without admitting they are really locked into a war. New shipments of Western-made long-range artillery systems have begun to make an impact, taking out Russian ammunition dumps and strategic bridges left, right and centre.

According to the Mirror, the diplomatic approach reveals “the Kremlin is in panic and desperate for the bloody war to end.” This, however, seems uncharacteristic for Putin and his inner circle.

While many declared that if Moscow did not conquer Kyiv and scatter Ukraine’s armed forces within three days, it had already lost, in reality, its top brass knows there are no time limits. With millions of young men to conscript and no end of mercenaries or outdated equipment to throw into the breach, it may not be able to fight the conflict well, but it can fight poorly for a very long time.

Moreover, it’s not clear that the Kremlin believes it is losing, either. Their troops are still capturing ground, the economy has avoided the apocalyptic predictions that came when Western sanctions were announced, and most of the organised opposition to Putin’s rule is now either imprisoned or in exile. Russia is in it for the long haul, no matter how bloody and how catastrophic for its own citizens it is.

That isn’t to say the country isn’t already feeling the impact of the war. “People here are getting angrier than you’d think,” one friend in Moscow said this week. “The situation is just going on and on, and everyone is worried it could be their children sent to the army, or that their job could be lost. Russians will put up with a lot, but maybe they will run out of patience soon.”

And yet, there are plenty of ways out for Moscow still. Having insisted it was invading as part of efforts to supposedly protect the breakaway Russian proxy-held regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas, the region has seen the fiercest fighting in the months since its initial plans to take Kyiv met a disastrous end. In June, the Kremlin claimed it had taken all of Luhansk, and now appears close to capturing the remainder of Donetsk as well – the territory claimed by the Moscow-backed separatist regimes.

At the same time, it has occupied a number of other major regions along the south and east of Ukraine, including Melitopol, Mariupol and Kherson, putting in collaborationist governments and planning referendums on their future. Conceivably, this is already enough for Putin to present as a victory to Russians and, if he fears the long-term impact of sanctions or that the domestic mood is changing about the war, that could fast become an option.

The furore Moscow has kicked up about fighting supposedly close to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station has also led to speculation the Kremlin could be creating a pretext for truce talks. Its diplomats have warned in recent days that shelling close by could create a colossal humanitarian disaster, despite experts arguing that the risk is low and Russian officials neglecting to address the fact that they turned the area into a battlefield in the first place.

Volodymyr Demchenko, a Ukrainian director turned soldier, believes that the escalation could be part of a play. “I have no doubt the Russians started shelling the plant in order to negotiate a ceasefire,” he wrote online on Sunday. According to him, if the remainder of the Donbas is captured, “[the Russians] will increase tension around the nuclear plant, head towards freezing the situation on the frontline” and push for negotiations.

The prospect of peace talks would be difficult for some of Ukraine’s international partners to reject out of hand. Turkey has been one of Kyiv’s biggest supporters when it comes to military and economic aid, but has already pressed for the two sides to do a deal as part of previous failed rounds of talks. Other European countries, struggling with the rising cost of energy and with the atrocities committed by Russian troops fading from the headlines, could be similarly disposed for concessions.

For Ukraine, though, that prospect presents an unenviable challenge. With the blood of so many soldiers and civilians spilled, there is of course a pressure to prevent more death and destruction. However, to negotiate away any of its sovereign territory – even accepting the 2014 annexation of its Crimean Peninsula – would seem to many to be a betrayal of the sacrifice made by their countrymen. President Volodymyr Zelensky would risk staunch challenges to any such proposal from hardliners in politics and the military.

Worse still, it is hard to do any kind of lasting deal with people you simply don’t trust. Even in the unlikely case such a deal was considered, unless Ukraine was admitted to NATO and given the Alliance’s full military protection, many would fear Russia would simply regroup and return to take what it hadn’t already.

A far more probable scenario is Moscow unilaterally announcing a ceasefire, and formally – in its view at least – annexing the territory it has already. Announcing victory on its own terms could create a wave of relief at home and shore it up against further sanctions from the West, while leaving all its options on the table for the future.

Kremlinology is often an exercise in guesswork, and Kremlinologists have taken that to new levels since the start of the war. Yet what is clear is that Putin will always be able to tell his people that they have won, while Ukraine will need far more help to overcome the uphill struggle it faces to achieve the only result it would be able to accept – total victory.