Russian Negotiator Reiterates “Nyet” on Ceasefire Even Before US Emissary Steve Witkoff Arrives in Moscow

Even though the Russians have made clear that they are in an uncompromising mood about Ukraine, the US has been so thick about getting the message that the Russians have resorted to using a two by four. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have as their lead stories that the Russian have rejected the 30 day ceasefire scheme cooked up in Jeddah between the US and Ukraine as the way to get peace negotiations rolling. Mind you, this unofficial but really not so response may be a sign that Russia recognizes that it is dealing with an even more “gang that can’t shoot straight” bunch than the fabulously lightweight Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and does not see much point in coddling them. More on that angle in due course.

Here is what the much-broadcast “rejection” amounted to. The interviewee, Yuri Ushakov, is an aide to Putin and an adviser on the Ukraine negotiations. As you can see, he is senior enough to be an interlocutor to Mike Waltz:

Russia says it isn’t interested in a temporary ceasefire but a permanent, long-term peaceful settlement with Ukraine. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/0Haf6xyHxM

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 13, 2025

Ushakov told the RT reporter that he told Waltz that the Russian position was no ceasefire. When he asked if his statement amounted to a Russian rejection, he demurred and said the two presidents would be talking. But Ushakov could have easily deflected the question had he wanted to or more importantly, had the Kremlin wanted to.

A similar fast-out-of-the-box reaction didn’t get as much play in the Western press:

⚡️ Temporary ceasefire is ‘absolutely unacceptable’ — Member of Russian Parliament’s Defense Committee Viktor Sobolev

In a personal statement, Sobolev says that such a truce would only ‘play into the hands of Ukrainian fascists’, allowing them to ‘regroup and rearm’ https://t.co/NBTbpbNoaD pic.twitter.com/7BXYOPVMdj

— RT (@RT_com) March 11, 2025

Notice Putin shortly after the US-Ukraine scheme was announced donned military fatigues during a visit to Kursk. Most readers know that Ukraine invaded Kursk, a Russian oblast, but didn’t get very far, and have been throwing men and material into Kursk as Russia has kept chewing away at their position. Hard-core military types have been upset that Russia did not dispatch the Kursk operation quickly, but I can see the logic of bleeding the Ukrainians there. Keeping a presence in Kursk became critical to Ukraine preserving appearances that it could keep up the fight against Russia, so they kept wasting soldiers and weapons to hold a strategically unimportant position.

Putin’s change in attire seems out of proportion to merely commemorating the imminent success of the clearing-Kursk operation (readers: did he ever suit up during the Chechen war?). So I put this in the category of yet-another over-the-top message to the very thick Americans. Some Americans took it that way:

🇷🇺 Putin in a military uniform?

❌ Guess he didn’t like the idea of a temporary ceasefire.

🇺🇦 UKRAINE IS FUCKED! pic.twitter.com/izyVLcueUN

— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) March 12, 2025

Reader Safety First described the key points Putin made :

Putin, very, very uncharacteristically, donned a military field uniform, rolled down to the regional HQ in Kursk (Gerasimov was already there), and made a 5-minute on-camera statement, one of the two salient points of which is that he “strongly suggested” the military considers establishing a buffer zone around Russian borders after finishing clearing out the Kursk region. If that isn’t a signal to the Americans about any ceasefires, I do not know what is…

His second salient point, by the way, was to stress that any Ukrainians captured in the Kursk region were not actually POWs, but rather “terrorists”, i.e. persons who have violated Russia’s criminal anti-terrorism statutes.

Let’s return to Ushakov’s remarks. As indicated yesterday, I was highly confident the Russians would not entertain the US-Ukraine scheme, but I had assumed they would go through the diplomatic motions, of at least having a what I called a tea and cookies chat, and yet again restating Russia’s conditions before talks could begin. As readers pointed out in comments, Russia could also have gone for slow-walking to get expectations down: “We agreed in Riyadh that we needed to get the diplomatic machinery on both sides back in operation before we can entertain any proposal.”

So why a speedy and very public rebuff? One possibility is that it was important to reassure the Russian public that Putin was not going all wobbly in response to a US overtures, particularly after the important milestone of the Ukraine rout in Kursk.

But I can see at least two other motives. Ushakov pointed out that Putin and Trump will be talking. Getting the message out fast that the ceasefire was na ga happen would recalibrate Trump’s expectations for what he could accomplish in that talk. The alternative, that Trump was all pumped up on the mistaken belief that Putin would agree to the ceasefire, perhaps after wrangling some concessions from Trump, could result in an unpleasant conversation.

Another motive might be to discourage the US from attempting to engage in diplomacy via press release. Ushakov made his remark before Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff landed in Russia. In a recent talk on Nima’s Dialogue Works, John Helmer argued that Witkoff’s job was to talk business. I am dubious. Witkoff seems to be Trump’s favorite negotiator. He dispatched Witkoff to handle a diplomatic matter, that of browbeating Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire. If Witkoff was indeed traveling to Moscow to (along with other matters) to try to move the peace talks forward, he would find it embarrassing to have part of his agenda undercut before he landed on Russian TV.

The Financial Times write-up of the Ushakov remarks and other developments includes:

Russia’s rejection of the US proposal aligned with Putin’s hardline stance ahead of high-level talks later on Thursday in Moscow, where Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, has landed…

Ushakov said Witkoff, who spoke to Putin last month as the US began extraordinary attempts at a rapprochement with Russia, would not be the White House’s main envoy to Moscow.

The Russian adviser said Washington and Moscow had agreed that any future contacts would be “of a closed nature” and declined to name the envoy.

It could also be that the Russian side is even getting pissed and having to work to maintain its famous froideur. John Helmer, in the same talk with Nima, emphatically made the same point we did, that the US was siding with and backing Ukraine despite trying to pretend it was going to be a fair broker. He picked up that it included a demand based on ia debunked Ukraine propaganda claim: “…. return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.” He added that the US-Ukraine Joint Statement had it all backwards, in setting the objective as “negotiations toward an enduring peace that provides for Ukraine’s long-term security”. Putin has been talking since the 2007 Munich Security Conference about the West’s threat to Russian security, and the resulting need for a new European security architecture. This is yet more proof that the US pays no heed to Russian words or interests.

In his talk yesterday, Alexander Mercouris read the Joint Statement as indicating that the US and Ukraine would negotiate together with Russia. I don’t infer that, but if Mercouris has this right, this would be another show-stopper. The Ukrainians do not want peace. Or maybe this would not be so bad from the Russian vantage. I could see the Russians maneuvering with the Ukrainians to thwart any forward movement.

This raises a final big issue: it is extremely hard to negotiate with people who don’t know what they are doing, which is the Trump team and the Ukrainians in spades (remember that the Zelensky government is composed heavily of members of his old production team, which is why they are so good at PR and stunts and not much else). I’ve been in that position occasionally, and it is very hard to lead functionally incompetent people (as in they may be skilled at other matters, but not the task at hand), since you need to take charge without looking like you have done so. I can’t imagine either the Trump or Ukraine team to be tractable.

In the mean time, the Europeans are trying to escalate. From Axios:

Polish President Andrzej Duda has called on the U.S. to move some of its nuclear arsenal to Polish territory to deter potential future Russian aggression…

Duda told the Financial Times in an interview published Thursday that the U.S. could move nuclear weapons stored in Western Europe or the U.S. to Poland, and that he’d discussed the idea with U.S. envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.

Scholz is on his way out, but is still reaffirming the European commitment to prevent an end to the war, since on current trajectories, it will be on Russian terms:

Scholz said that Russia is striving to demilitarize Ukraine, but that this cannot be allowed.
He stressed that a strong army is “the most important guarantee of the country’s security.” pic.twitter.com/RSwPzaI0Mg

— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) March 13, 2025

So despite the US and its mouthpieces saying the ball was in Russia’s court, it’s now back on the US side of the net. We’ll see what happens next.