Taking Inches in Battle, Russia Demands Miles in Talks

While the world expects to see if it appears in Türkiye for the negotiations of Alto El Fuego this week, President Vladimir V. Putin has been sending a clear message, reinforced by his officials. Russia is winning on the battlefield, so you should get what it was.

Putin said at the end of March that the Russian forces had the advantage throughout the front and suggested that Moscow was close to overcoming the Ukrainians, an argument that the Kremlin has used to underpin Hardball’s demands. “We have reasons to believe that we are ready to finish them,” Putin said, added: “People in Ukraine need to realize what is happening.”

Andrei V. Kartapolov, head of the Defense Committee in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, reiterated that message on Tuesday, saying that Ukraine needed to recognize that the Russian army advanced in 116 directions. If the Ukrainians did not want to speak, he added, they must go to the “language of the Russian bayonet.”

The hardball approach has been accompanied by the killing about peace negotiations. It is not clear if Mr. Putin will attend the conversations he initially proposed for Middle Rank delegations on Thursday in Türkiye. Mr. Zensky increased the bet, saying that he would attend and hope to see Mr. Putin, knowing that Mr. Putin is reluctant to meet him. President Trump said he could go if the Russian president outside.

And Mr. Putin has left everyone in Limbo.

The Russian position has raised a challenge for the Trump administration, which has found that Russian officials make extreme demands that the battlefield situation does not seem to justify. While Russian forces have taken advantage of the territory of the advantage and tasks in recent times, they are far from defeating Ukrainians and have advanced at a very high cost.

However, in conversations with Trump administration officials, they have insisted that Ukraine accepts strict limitations in their military, including number or soldiers and number and type of weapons. And they have a leg demanding the complete territory of the four regions that Moscow claims to have annexed in eastern Ukraine, including two regional capitals that Ukraine controls.

“Russia cannot expect a territory that has not yet conquered,” said Vice President JD Vance in an interview with Fox News earlier this month.

It is likely that any success of Washington in the conversations would somehow convince Mr. Putin that he will benefit more of the warm ties with the United States than of expensive incremental profits in battle.

In the last 16 months, as the Russian forces took the initiative, Moscow Tok 1,827 square miles of Ukraine, a narrower area than of theware, according to the data of the Institute for the Study of War that measures until April 1.

On that period, the United States government estimates that Russia lost more than 400,000 troops to death or injuries, a high cost due to the control of less than 1 percent of the Ukrainian territory.

Russia is not likely to be easily persuaded. Putin has a strong desire that Ukraine Capitule and believes that the most powerful sponsor of kyiv, United States, is already withdrawing his support.

In Wars of Attraition, incremental profits can presage an advance, if the losing side runs out of troops and ammunition and its defensive lines finally collapse. This may be with what Russia counts: Ukraine, whose population in times of war is less than Russia’s quarter, has lost many soldiers to keep the line.

Russia also has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, thought that Putin has said that he still does not see the need to use it. And it has a fixed arms production capacity, which would be heavier in favor if US supplies to Ukraine dried.

Nor does Mr. Putin seem upset by other western threats. On Wednesday, European Union officials, a step towards the approval of additional sanctions against Russia, including a plan to tighten the “shadow fleet” or ships that transport their oil, according to the diplomatic family with matters. Speak. Speak. Trump, while threatens new sanctions, has not yet imposed any.

Tatiana Stanovaya, main member of the Eurasia Carnegie center, said Putin was waiting for a collapse or the defensive lines of Ukraine after a gradual fabric.

“And this will be a psychological blow so serious that the elites will say,” Zensky comes out here. Now we will reach an agreement with Putin ourselves, “said Stanovaya.” Putin believes that all this should happen and will happen. “

But well, horses to protect their relations with Mr. Trump, the most friendly US president with Russia in years. Mr. Putin will continue to try to have it both ways, said Stanovaya, and added that that is why the Russian leader proposes the conversations.

“The proposal to meet in Istanbul with Delegations is an attempt to keep Trump in the negotiation process,” he said. “He is not doing this for the Ukrainians, he is doing this for Trump, just for Trump.”

As a result, he said, whatever happens on Thursday will be “a show.”

“Each side will try to play their role,” he said. “But in reality the conditions are not there for a really serious discussion of any truce or peace.”

Jeanna Smialey Brussels contributed reports.