US pushes for direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv despite intel showing Putin not ready for peace

The Trump administration has proposed that direct talks be held between delegations from Russia and Ukraine as the next step towards ending the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a press conference in Kyiv on Saturday, following a meeting with the Prime Minister of Portugal, according to news outlet RBC-Ukraine. 

Zelensky, who said that the proposal had been discussed at a meeting between Ukrainian and US delegations in Miami earlier in the week, said that he would invite European representatives to any such meeting, though he added that it would only make sense to conduct direct negotiations with Moscow once the proposed US peace plan still being revised by Kyiv and Washington had been finalised. 

The Ukrainian president said that there was still “no peace agreement yet” and hit out at Moscow’s demand that Ukraine hold presidential elections before any peace deal could be agreed, BBC News Russian reported, noting that it wasn’t up to Moscow to decide how elections should be held in Ukraine. 

In a change of tack on 10 December, Zelensky indicated his readiness to hold elections within 60–90 if Kyiv’s Western allies were prepared to offer security guarantees and as long as Ukraine’s parliament passed revised legislation allowing elections to be held under martial law.

The Kremlin has frequently attempted to paint Zelensky as an illegitimate leader due to the official expiration of his presidential term in May 2024, since when Zelensky has legally remained president as the country’s constitution does not allow for the holding of elections under martial law.

The US proposal for direct peace talks to begin was apparently made despite the impasse that initial attempts by US President Donald Trump’s negotiators have reached as diplomats struggle to reconcile the diametrically opposed demands being made by Moscow and Kyiv, specifically over control of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. 

Despite the Trump administration’s continued push to get a rapid peace deal agreed between the two warring sides, Reuters reported on Friday that six separate sources familiar with the latest American intelligence had confirmed that Vladimir Putin has not given up his plans to capture the entirety of Ukraine, as well as other countries in Europe that were once part of the USSR. 

The US intelligence community’s position on Putin broadly aligns with that of EU leaders and European intelligence and military circles. “The intelligence has always been that Putin wants more,” Mike Quigley, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Reuters. “The Europeans are convinced of it. The Poles are absolutely convinced of it. The Baltics think they're first.”