Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week he was open to peace talks with Ukraine. In particular, the Reuters agency, citing four sources, said that Moscow was willing to consider peace talks that would freeze the current Russian occupation of about one-fifth of Ukraine.

Putin himself responded to this by saying that Russia was willing to talk about peace, based on previous agreements. He hinted at a failed deal in Istanbul, soon after the war began, in 2022, which collapsed.

However, according to CNN’s analysis, these statements of Vladimir Putin were not made by chance. They came during a visit to the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko – which in the past happened moments before the Kremlin used Belarusian territory for military movements in Ukraine, while on Friday it happened during joint nuclear weapons tactical exercises between the two countries. Putin was talking about peace with a setting that did not match his words.

The role of Viktor Yanukovych

Putin has questioned the legitimacy of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, after Kiev was forced to delay elections due to Putin’s own war. At the same time, there were unconfirmed reports that the private jet of the former president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych landed in Belarus. The pro-Russian Yanukovych fled Ukraine in 2014 after forces loyal to him shot and killed dozens of protesters in central Kiev. The mere possibility of his presence while Putin and Lukashenko met led to speculation that Moscow was again hoping to engineer a proxy return to Ukrainian power.

The Kremlin’s less brutal goal in Ukraine – full or partial occupation – involves a president in Kiev it considers loyal, who would halt the country’s path to the European Union and NATO. This scenario seemed fantastic before the Russian invasion in 2022, but now it seems less so if it is to be imposed on a population seething with the brutality of the Kremlin.

The question is though because Russia is now talking about peace at the very moment when he seems to be winning on the front lines of the battles?

Diplomacy has always been a military tool for the Kremlin. He spoke for peace in Syria in 2015 as his warplanes pounded civilians in rebel-held areas. He spoke of peace in 2015 with Ukraine while Russian troops and their proxies were in the midst of an all-out assault on the strategic Ukrainian town of Debaltseve.

As CNN comments, the experience so far suggests that Putin believes the talks are worth continuing in case they unexpectedly lead to a useful non-violent outcome or give their adversary a reason to pause in the fighting to try to coax him into a deal. .

Moscow can too to speak of peace again now for two reasons. Firstly, Ukraine and its allies are convening a peace summit in Switzerland in June to discuss, without Russia, what kind of deal it might accept. It is likely aimed at building a momentum that the Kremlin can take when its forces are finally exhausted militarily or in a stalemate.

Zelensky expressed his hope that China – Russia’s most powerful ally but only a partial supporter in the Ukraine war – would attend the summit. So it is possible that Putin is talking peace today to suggest to Beijing not to get involved in diplomacy for Russia without her presence. There is little chance that the Swiss summit will end the war, but there may be a greater understanding in the West of how serious a threat a genuine Moscow peace deal poses.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Friday that Putin’s hints at peace talks were directly aimed at sabotaging the summit. “Putin is currently unwilling to end his aggression against Ukraine,” he wrote in X, adding “that is why he is so afraid” of the Swiss summit.

Second, and more importantly, Putin is sending messages to Western governments and the current US presidential campaign. He is trying to hint opaquely – perhaps to the populists in Europe or the MAGA Republicans in the United States – that he has a simple deal on his hands, in which the front lines, on which Ukraine is currently losing with significant losses, can suddenly “freeze ».

Western support for the war is expensive and increasingly unpopular—though the recent $61 billion passed by Congress may have given the issue a reprieve from being at the mercy of the electoral public for about a year.

The Reuters report allows those in the West who want to see an end to the war to believe that the Kremlin could end the war as it is and immediately. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the article sound like it reflected Russia’s permanent position. But it may ultimately sound new and interesting to key Western figures: Donald Trump – who has failed to explain how he would implement his claim that he could end the war in 24 hours – and other less hostile NATO members with France, the United Kingdom and the Baltic countries, on the need to never trust Russia at the negotiating table.

Putin is a pragmatist. He started the war thinking it would be easy. She carried him on, believing that his tolerance for pain, his commanding assurance, and his patience for victory would triumph. He might be right, just now. He now sees a moment of electoral weakness in the US and other European states, which he has countered with a vague, opaque message that it may be time for diplomacy.

It is likely to gain some traction among those who desperately hope the war in Ukraine will simply die out, and who are less mindful of the existential threat a victorious and overmilitarized Moscow poses to NATO’s eastern members. But it should be seen through the lens of the deep cynicism of Moscow’s previous diplomacy in Syria and Ukraine: it is being used as a time to ferociously pursue the same military goals, but under the false backdrop that peace may be just around the corner.