Perhaps Putin should tell the Russian people and the Russian Army that his interest in resolving the conflict in Ukraine with peace negotiations lies in the possibility that the negotiations could be used to achieve a Great Power Agreement like what he and Lavrov tried to achieve with the West during the winter of 2021-2022 prior to Russia’s forced intervention in Ukraine. A New Yalta in effect.
Russian foreign affairs commentators have been speaking for some time about the need for a new Yalta agreement. A few years ago I was asked to address the Russian Academy of Sciences on the subject. I told them something that they did not want to hear: that Washington’s claim to hegemony prevented accommodation to Russian sovereignty.
A few thinking people have been perplexed at Putin’s conduct of the conflict in Ukraine. Russia could have ended the war quickly with conquest, but instead has fought a slow, restrained war that has greatly expanded the war with Putin and Lavrov bleating constantly for “peace negotiations.”