Vladimir Putin will reject Donald Trump‘s proposed peace plan and would only end the conflict in Ukraine if he gives him huge concessions, a hardliner close to the Kremlin has warned.
Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev, who is sanctioned by the West, slammed Trump’s recently picked envoy Keith Kellogg and his proposals on how to end the conflict with Kyiv.
‘Kellogg comes to Moscow with his plan, we take it and then tell him to screw himself, because we don’t like any of it. That’d be the whole negotiation,’ Malofeyev said bluntly in an interview from a luxury Dubai resort.
Former general Kellogg has called for the existing frontlines to be frozen and Moscow and Kyiv to be forced to the negotiating table – a plan endorsed by Trump who said they would achieve ‘peace through strength’ together and who has long vowed to end the war ‘within 24 hours’.
Malofeyev has responded by presenting a long list of demands which go beyond Putin’s publicly-stated conditions for a ceasefire, which include Kyiv ceding four frontline regions to Russia and agreeing to never join NATO.
The businessman, who has strong influence but no official position in the Kremlin, told the FT that Trump would only have a chance of ending the conflict if he backtracked on the decision to allow Kyiv to use ATACMS long-range missiles on Russian territory.
He warned that the move had left the world ‘on the brink of nuclear war‘, and said that if the US failed to roll back its support for Ukraine, Moscow could launch a tactical nuclear weapon.
‘There will be a radiation zone nobody will ever go into in our lifetime,’ he threatened. ‘And the war will be over.’
Influential Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev, who is sanctioned by the west, slammed the proposed US peace plan
President Volodymyr Zelensky is pictured meeting with Trump during the US presidential race in September
A Russian T-80BVM tank fires towards Ukrainian positions at an undisclosed location in Ukraine last month
Putin’s publicly-stated conditions for a ceasefire include requiring Kyiv to cede four frontline regions to Russia
Malofeyev, who this year married Maria Lvova-Belova, a close Putin ally wanted by the International Criminal Court for the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children, also called for the removal of President Volodymyr Zelensky as part of a peace deal.
He added that the talks would not be constructive unless Trump was willing to discuss other global flashpoints with Putin himself and acknowledge that Ukraine is a major concern for the Kremlin.
‘We need to talk not about the future of Ukraine, but the future of Europe and the world,’ he said.
NATO’s new chief yesterday revealed he had warned Trump that the US would face a ‘dire threat’ from China, Iran and North Korea should Ukraine be pushed to sign a deal on Moscow’s terms.
‘We cannot have a situation where we have Kim Jong Un and the Russian leader and Xi Jinping and Iran high-fiving because we came to a deal which is not good for Ukraine, because long-term that will be a dire security threat not only to Europe but also to the US,’ Mark Rutte told the FT.
Rutte said he made the point during a meeting with president-elect Trump in late November, highlighting the fact that Moscow is already ‘working closely’ with the west’s foes.
‘Look at the missile technology which is now being sent from Russia into North Korea, which is posing a dire threat not only to South Korea, Japan, but also to the US mainland,’ Rutte said he told Trump.
He added that Iran is receiving funds from Moscow in return for missiles and drones which is then supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East.
Rutte also said he contended that China’s president Xi Jinping is ‘watching very carefully what comes out of this’ – an apparent reference to Beijing potentially feeling emboldened to realise its ambitions in Taiwan should Russia be allowed to take Ukrainian territory.
US President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte as they met in Palm-Beach, Florida on November 22
It comes as Ukraine today called for ‘full’ NATO membership as the only guarantee of security in the face of Russian aggression, ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
‘We are convinced that the only real guarantee of security for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent to further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,’ the foreign ministry in Kyiv said in a statement.
Almost three years after invading, Russia’s forces are accelerating their offensive, capturing more Ukrainian territory in November than in any month since March 2022, according to AFP analysis of data from the US Institute for the Study of War.
Putin’s forces today claimed to have seized two more villages in Moscow’s grinding advance.
Malofeyev this year married Maria Lvova-Belova (pictured), a close Putin ally wanted by the International Criminal Court for the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children
Meanwhile Kyiv said today that its forces had repelled a Russian effort to cross the Oskil river, a key waterway which has long been a de facto front line across the eastern frontline.
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR Foreign Intelligence Service, said last week that Russia held the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.
He also added that Russia is open to negotiations but stated that the Kremlin would ‘categorically reject’ any ‘freezing’ of the current frontline, demanding that Ukraine relinquish areas of the four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – that the Kremlin has illegally annexed without fully occupying.
Trump has famously said that the Russia-Ukraine war would never have started had he been president and claimed he could bring the conflict to an abrupt halt – without ever revealing his plans for doing so.
Ukrainian soldiers work with “pion” artillery in the northern direction of the Donbass frontline last year
‘I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them.’
But Kellogg’s plan to end the war is expected to provide the foundations for Trump’s approach, particularly now that the retired general has been tapped as special envoy.
In his April paper for US think tank America First, Kellogg recognised the solution would be a bitter pill to swallow but would ultimately be the quickest way to end the bloodshed.
‘The Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people will have trouble accepting a negotiated peace that does not give them back all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia responsible for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine.
‘But as Donald Trump said at the CNN town hall in 2023, “I want everyone to stop dying.” That’s our view, too,’ the paper concluded.
