Taking Inches in Battle, Russia Demands Miles in Talks

As the world waits to to see if he shows up in Turkey for cease-fire negotiations this week, President Vladimir V. Putin has been sending a clear message, reinforced by his officials. Russia is winning on the battlefield, so it should get what it wants.

Mr. Putin said in late March that Russian forces had the advantage on the entire front and suggested Moscow was close to vanquishing the Ukrainians — an argument the Kremlin has used to underpin hardball demands. “We have reason to believe that we are set to finish them off,” Mr. Putin said, adding: “People in Ukraine need to realize what is going on.”

Andrei V. Kartapolov, head of the defense committee in the lower chamber of Russian Parliament, reiterated that message on Tuesday, saying Ukraine needed to recognize the Russian military was advancing in 116 directions. If the Ukrainians did not want to talk, he added, they must listen to “the language of the Russian bayonet.”

The hardball approach has been accompanied by gamesmanship over peace negotiations. It is unclear whether Mr. Putin will attend the talks he initially proposed for midlevel delegations on Thursday in Turkey. Mr. Zelensky upped the ante, saying he would attend and expected to see Mr. Putin, knowing Mr. Putin is loath to meet him. President Trump said he might go if the Russian president went.

And Mr. Putin has left everyone in limbo.

The Russian position has posed a challenge for the Trump administration, which has found Russian officials making extreme demands that the battlefield situation does not appear to justify. While Russian forces have seized the advantage and taken territory of late, they are a far cry from defeating the Ukrainians and have advanced at a very high cost.

Yet in talks with Trump administration officials, they have insisted Ukraine accept strict limitations on its military, including the number of soldiers and number and type of weapons. And they have been demanding the full territory of all four regions that Moscow claims to have annexed in eastern Ukraine, including two regional capitals that Ukraine controls.

“Russia can’t expect to be given territory that they haven’t even conquered yet,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News earlier this month.

Any success by Washington in the talks is likely to hinge on somehow convincing Mr. Putin that he stands to benefit more from warm ties with the United States than from costly incremental gains in battle.

Over the past 16 months, as Russian forces seized the initiative, Moscow took 1,827 square miles of Ukraine, an area smaller than Delaware, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War measuring up to April 1.

Over that period, the U.S. government estimates, Russia lost more than 400,000 troops to death or injury — a high cost for wresting control of less than 1 percent of Ukrainian territory.

Russia isn’t likely to be easily persuaded. Mr. Putin has a strong desire for Ukraine to capitulate and believes that Kyiv’s most powerful backer, the United States, is already withdrawing its support.

In wars of attrition, incremental gains can presage a breakthrough, if the losing side runs out of troops and ammunition and its defensive lines finally collapse. This may be what Russia is counting on: Ukraine, whose wartime population is a less than quarter of Russia’s, has lost many soldiers holding the line.

Russia also possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, though Mr. Putin has said he does not yet see a need to use it. And it has vast arms production capacity, which would weigh more heavily in its favor should U.S. supplies to Ukraine dry up.

Nor does Mr. Putin seem bothered by further threats from the West. On Wednesday, European Union officials took a step toward approving additional sanctions against Russia, including a plan to clamp down on the “shadow fleet” of ships transporting its oil, according to diplomats familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Trump, while threatening new sanctions, has yet to impose any.

Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russian Eurasia Center, said Mr. Putin expected a collapse of Ukraine’s defensive lines after a gradual weakening.

“And this will be such a serious psychological blow that the elites will say, ‘Zelensky, get out of here. We will now come to an agreement with Putin ourselves,’” Ms. Stanovaya said. “Putin believes that all of this should happen and will happen.”

But he also wants to protect his relations with Mr. Trump, the most Russia-friendly U.S. president in years. Mr. Putin will continue to try to have it both ways, Ms. Stanovaya said, adding that was why the Russian leader proposed the talks.

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

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

“Each side will try to play its part,” she said. “But in reality the conditions aren’t there for a real serious discussion of any truce or peace.”

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels.