"Russia should work to weaken the United States' negotiating position on Ukraine by helping stoke tensions between the Trump administration and other countries, furthering Moscow's efforts to dismantle the Ukrainian state."
The document, written in February by an influential think tanks Moscow-based intelligence agency close to the Federal Security Service (FSB) unveils Russia’s demands for an end to the conflict in Ukraine: it dismisses President Donald Trump’s preliminary plans for a peace deal within 100 days as “impossible to achieve” and says that “a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis cannot happen before 2026.”
The text It also rejects any proposal to send peacekeeping forces to Ukraine., as some in Europe have proposed, and insists on the recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Ukrainian territories it has conquered. It also calls for further partition of Ukrainian territory through the creation of a buffer zone in the north-eastern territory of Ukraine bordering Russian regions such as Bryansk and Belgorod, as well as a demilitarized zone in the southern regions of Ukraine near Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, including the Odesa region.
It then indicates the need for "to completely dismantle" the current Ukrainian government.
The document, which was obtained by a European intelligence service, highlights the challenges Trump still faces in reaching any agreement with Russia on a peace deal over Ukraine, now that Kyiv has backed Washington's proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, seemingly bridging a gap between the two countries.
While Russia has yet to signal it will sign any ceasefire, analysts have warned that Moscow still has a multitude of ways to drag out the agreement even on a temporary pause in hostilities and has said that the road to any long-term peace agreement is still treacherous..
As mentioned, the document was prepared by a think tanks which works closely with the Fifth Service of the FSB, the division that oversees operations in Ukraine, in the week before Russia-US talks in Riyadh on February 18.
While hawkish members of the Russian elite pushed the Kremlin to continue the war and "use the current situation to advance further", other groups were pushing for a quicker resolution of the conflict and "at least for a ceasefire", said a Russian academic close to diplomatic circles in Moscow.
The FSB-related document outlines ways Russia can strengthen its negotiating position by exacerbating tensions between the United States and both China and the European Union, and by proposing U.S. access to Russian minerals including in territories it occupies in Ukraine, such as the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, where there are said to be significant reserves of so-called rare earths.
In an interview on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin said much the same thing when he suggested that Moscow may invite US companies to develop Russian mineral deposits, including in occupied territories in Ukraine. Which appeared to be an effort to undermine a proposed agreement on the development of mineral resources between Ukraine and the United States.
The report says Russia’s efforts should first focus on normalizing relations between Washington and Moscow, through the restoration of full diplomatic staffs at both countries’ embassies and the appointment of Alexander Darchiev as Russia’s ambassador to the United States — suggestions that emerged publicly following talks between Russian and U.S. officials in Istanbul on Feb. 27, which apparently focused on the operations of their respective diplomatic missions.
The document proposed that Russia agree not to station its intermediate-range ballistic missiles Oresik in Belarus, on the border with Europe, while in exchange the United States would agree not to install new missile systems on the continent. It also suggests that Russia stop arms supplies to countries considered "hostile" to the United States, while in exchange the United States would stop arming Ukraine - but adds that Ending Russian arms supplies to Moscow's allies would be 'difficult to achieve'.
The paper rejects what it says are initial proposals made by Trump's special envoy on Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, for a peace deal that would include a suggested element of Ukraine's surrender of territories taken from Russia and Kyiv's agreement not to attempt to retake them in the future by military or diplomatic means.
The FSB-related document says that, however, without official recognition of Russian sovereignty over the occupied regions, è "quite likely" that the armed conflict resumes in the medium term, "for example after the next change of administration in the United States".
The document also rejects any potential political concessions by Ukraine, such as Kyiv's refusal to join NATO and holding elections in which pro-Russian parties would be allowed to participate. "In reality, the current regime in Kyiv cannot be changed from within the country. Its complete dismantling is necessary", it is said.
The presence of any peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine is dismissed as "absolutely useless" since any force would be under "serious Western influence", while US plans to continue arming Ukraine following any peace deal are "absolutely unacceptable", as well as maintaining the Ukrainian army at its current level of 1 million men.
Efforts to entice Russia into a peace deal by offering to partially lift sanctions are also being rejected. "It is not clear what the benefit for Russia would be.", he says, because "the importance of the sanctions factor against our country has been clearly exaggerated".
Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat based in Geneva, said Russia was trying to lure Trump into the talks by demonstrating its "openness and flexibility" while Putin was trying to drag out the negotiations by positioning himself as "a true friend of Donald Trump, who understands him completely, who wants to help him achieve his goals in the United States, but obviously would need something from him because he can't do it for free".
Dmitri Alperovitch, Chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, think tanks for national security, said it might now be difficult for Putin to reject the ceasefire proposal, otherwise it could jeopardize Moscow's potential realignment with Washington.
"The stakes now (in his view) are much more than Ukraine: the bigger prize is US-Russian diplomatic normalization, the abandonment of sanctions, the wedge inside NATO.", Alperovitch said in a post on X.
