Marcel Gascón Barberá

#RadioMoskva US envoys take Ukraine peace deal to Moscow The Dynamic Envoy Duo have just landed in Moscow and were picked up at the airport by their counterpart Kirill Dmitriev. They are on their way to see Russian President Vladimir Putin in what could well be the most important meeting of the whole war. The boys are bringing the details of the deal they have been working on in Abu Dhabi for the last two days. It seems some real progress was made but now they have to get VVP to sign off on it. Several key aspects have solidified, but overall note that everyone is treating this as a step-by-step process so there will be no breakthrough announcement today. All they are hoping for is for Putin to say: “I can work with that,” and then go to the next round, with a Putin-Zelenskiy meeting to actually agree on some sort of territory deal at the end of the road. But it seems the scope of the negotiations have narrowed considerably. What has been agreed already is there has to be some sort of new pan-European security architecture that starts with strong guarantees for Ukraine and Russia. The focus on a Russian deal is new and appears to have expanded. And any deal for Russia appears to be a starting point for an expanded European security deal for everyone. That will be a very long, but extremely welcome, process to negotiate. It fits perfectly with our understanding of this new post Pax Americana multipolar world we now live in that would reduce the chaos of the interregnumthat has already started. These talks are no longer about a short-term ceasefire (although Bankova is still insisting on that – a non-starter for the Kremlin) but a long-term step-by-step process to a new post Cold War security pact. This is long-overdue in my opinion and marks a major change in direction if it is true. Note also this deals exactly with the “root causes” of the conflict that Putin has been complaining about for years, so that is already a major concession by the West to Putin’s position. The evidence for this change of tack is the Trump administration focus on the need for a security deal and that suddenly the Kremlin is saying out loud and repeatedly that “the Europeans must be involved” in just the last few weeks. This is also new as until now the Kremlin has rejected out of hand any EU involvement. Here is another subtly: everyone (including Finnish President Alexander Stubb et al) are being very clear on the distinction between “Europe” and the “EU”; the EU remains excluded, but Europeans are not. Another telltale was Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s comment at the presser yesterday when asked about territories that the best thing that could happen is if Europe finds a representative quickly. “If Europe could identify one person to speak on their behalf that would be a bigger achievement than getting the Russians to include them in the negotiations,” Kushner told journalists . Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said exactly the same thing at the weekend. The Kremlin wantsto negotiate with Europe. That is also new. The second aspect is everyone has agreed that Ukraine has to give up the Donbas – everyone, that is, except Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The first day in Abu Dhabi was spent discussing a security deal and even the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, was very upbeat after the first round, saying progress towards peace had been made. But he also made it clear that the security deal on the table now is much more ambitious than the one discussed at the Moscow meeting on December 3. "Together with the American side, we exchanged our ⁠views on this; on some points we reached a common ​understanding, whilst on others we did not. And this discussion will, of ​course, continue. The world needs a new, modern, updated security system – one that is fair and does not disadvantage any particular countries," Medinsky said. The Donbas is going to be the tough nut to crack and will probably end up being the dealbreaker. Yesterday the Donbas was discussed at a two-hour closed-door meeting and the mood in comments afterwards was a lot dourer. Nothing really significant was said so I’m assuming less progress was made. The only detail that did come out was the Duo got their jigsaw out and suggested cutting around the two Fortress Cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, which Kyiv would keep, but the land around them would go to Russia. It’s a pretty ridiculous idea – how could you make that work in practice? - but at least they had a go. And it’s a lot more specific than the more general idea of a DMZ, dressed up as a “special economic zone”, that was suggested before. Zelenskiy is not buying this Donbas-for-security deal and he has made himself the major obstacle to doing the deal. While the delegates said little after the last meeting, Zelenskiy was outspoken. He recounted a lecture he gave the Dynamic Duo, explaining that the territory issue was “not a real estate deal” and his land is not only Ukrainian sovereign territory, but people’s homes. He has significantly hardened his position from August 2024 when he suggested holding a referendumto grant him authority to give land away. As I argued yesterday, his reluctance is perfectly understandable: he (correctly in IMHO) assesses US President Donald Trump’s offer of a “Article 5-like” security guarantee is not worth the paper it would be written on and without that he lays Ukraine open to another Russian invasion in two years’ time where the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) will walk right up to the Dnipro River and take half of Ukraine which it will never get back. Note that in all the talk of the last few days, Europe has also failed to say a word about providing Ukraine with similar security deals. As an aside, as we reported, joining the EU solves this problem as it comes with the EU’s own collective security deal, Article 42/7, which is actually stronger than Nato’s Article 5, but an interesting Reuters piece this morning says that EU members are actually a lot more pessimistic about ever letting Ukraine into the EU than they admit to in public, because the access hurdles are so enormous. A videocirculating online this week showing a three-story luxury apartment in Kyiv that includes a crocodile pool belonging to an official in the energy sector doesn’t help. Nevertheless, some sort of Donbas proposal was thrashed out, and it is that the US boys are talking to Putin today. The ball is now in his court. It remains to be seen how badly he wants to end the war. Or to frame it differently: how interested Putin is in getting a negotiated end to the war that comes with sanctions relief, the new pan-European security deal, and a ton of US business vs a military victory that will leave Russia pariahed, security insecure and a lapdog to China for generations. When you look at it in these terms, then there are actually quite a lot of incentives for Putin to bend on Donbas. But what we have learnt over the last four years is that his default setting now is hard man; his decision to invade in the first place was an extremely Soviet decision where he was willing to sacrifice Russia’s prosperity for what he sees as its “security.” Today’s comments will be very interesting. This article originally appeared in Editor’s Picks, a free daily email digest of bne IntelliNews’ best stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up for free here. to989.infusionsoft.com/app/f… bneeditor.substack.com/p/us-…