Russia's offer to "fundamentally cut back" its military operations in northern Ukraine sparked optimism around the potential for a peace deal Tuesday, easing oil prices and boosting equity markets. Yet there's strong reason for caution.
Russia's chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky presented the decision to draw back from the capital, Kyiv, and the northern city of Chernihiv as de-escalatory, but it is likely also to be tactical.
Not only has Ukraine's military been inflicting losses and taking back some territory around Kyiv in any case, but Russian commanders had already said they planned to re-concentrate their forces in the east, where they have made greater progress with the city of Mariupol in the final stages of a brutal siege.
De-escalation does not mean a cease-fire or complete withdrawal of troops from around the capital, said one person close to the Kremlin. And Russia is still setting out demands for sweeping concessions that Ukraine is unlikely to agree to.
"It's perplexing to some extent to see that markets are reacting as strongly as they are," Alexander Rodnyansky, an adviser to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Bloomberg TV after Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met Tuesday in Istanbul, Turkey.
"The only thing that will bring them really to the negotiating table is the success of Ukraine on the battlefield and further economic pressure, in terms of sanctions," he said.
That skepticism was shared by the U.S. as well as some military analysts watching one of Europe's largest security crises since 1945.
"I think there was very serious misunderstanding of what both sides said in Istanbul after the talks," said Evgeny Minchenko, a Moscow-based political consultant. "So far I just heard is that there will be less action near Kyiv and Chernihiv, because the Russian army is concentrating its resources against the Ukrainian army in Donbas."
Two people close to the Kremlin, both of whom asked not to be identified, set out scenarios that did not involve Russia moving preemptively to defuse the conflict.
That's even as it has suffered setbacks in the north of Ukraine in particular, with troops bogged down for weeks in long convoys outside Kyiv and Ukraine having success in destroying both Russian tanks and aircraft.
Ukraine's defense ministry had recently reported the withdrawal of troops with Russia's 106th paratroops division and 35th combined arms army from near Kyiv to Belarus, assuming they were being replenished. Video images since have shown the units being loaded onto trains, suggesting a deeper withdrawal, according to Janes, the defense news agency. Redeployment east is another possibility.
Russia's likely goals are now to take the entirety of the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, together with a land corridor from the Russian border to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, said one of the people familiar with the Kremlin's thinking.
Altogether, that would require Ukraine to agree to the permanent loss of about 20% of its internationally recognized territory. Moscow would also demand Ukraine's neutrality, the preservation of a Russian military presence in certain areas and the right to inspect military infrastructure elsewhere in the country, the person said.
A settlement could only come once the situation on the battlefield has been clarified in line with Russia's goals, and probably also would require a major defeat of Ukrainian forces, according to the second person close to the Kremlin. The person recalled the Minsk II peace deal that ended large scale hostilities between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists in Donbas in 2015. That agreement, favorable to Russia, was made possible only by a crushing Ukrainian military loss.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals still stretch well beyond Donbas, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday. Nobody should "be fooling ourselves" over suggestions from Moscow that it would reduce attacks around Kyiv or withdraw forces in the area. The Pentagon isn't ready to call it a withdrawal or even a "retreat," Kirby said.
Michael Kofman, a Russian military expert at the Washington think tank CNA, said in a Twitter thread that the Russian command's eastward shift has been evident for about two weeks already. Even so, he said, it would make little sense for them to pull back entirely from the northern front, because that would simply release Ukrainian forces to join the battle for Donbas.
"We are likely to see consolidation around Kyiv and an attempt by Russian mil to fix Ukrainian forces there, while shifting the bulk of available fighting power to Donbas," Kofman wrote.
Despite hopes on Tuesday that there might be sufficient common ground to arrange a meeting soon between Zelenskiy and Putin, no date was set for a continuation of the talks as they broke up in Istanbul. There also appeared little immediate prospect of a cease-fire.
