Russian President Vladimir Putin has been privately signaling that he is open to a cease-fire in Ukraine, the New York Times reported Saturday, despite publicly saying he won’t back down from the conflict that has been ongoing since early last year.
More than 10,000 civilians have been killed and more than 18,500 injured since the war began, according to the United Nations, in addition to tens of thousands of troops.
Putin has been indicating since at least September that he is open to stopping the fighting at the current boundary lines, the Times reported, citing two former senior Russian officials close to the Kremlin and other American and international officials.
That’s far from Putin’s apparent goal of overtaking Ukraine. Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and quickly overtook large swaths of the country. But Ukrainian forces pushed back hard and successfully forced Russia to retreat from its northern regions. Since Oct. 2022, the battle lines have remained largely the same, with Russia holding parts of the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine.
Putin also “sent out feelers” for a cease-fire last fall, according to the Times, and communicated that he was satisfied with the territory they had taken. But sources cited by the Times also warned that it could be an attempt at “misdirection” or that Putin could change his mind if his troops regain momentum. It’s also not clear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would accept the deal, as Russia still holds parts of the country.
The Russian military had been worn down by early 2023, as professional soldiers were replaced with draftees and prisoners who did not stand up well to Ukraine’s forces. Only a small portion of Russians support the war effort, and Putin faced an embarrassing mutiny from mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
However, Ukraine has been unable to retake its lost territories. It’s facing wavering support in the West and is competing for international attention with the war in Gaza.
Zelenskyy has been lobbying United States leaders to finalize additional aid for his country, including visiting Washington last week to meet with Congressional leaders and President Joe Biden.
Biden has requested $60 billion for Ukraine, as well as $14 billion for Israel, $10 billion for humanitarian assistance and $14 billion for the U.S. border. The package has stalled in Congress as the Republican caucus remains fractured over whether to continue to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
The Biden administration has warned that it will soon run out of funding for Ukraine’s war effort without additional funds approved by Congress. Republicans refused to vote on the supplemental funding request without significant changes to asylum and border policies.
Bipartisan negotiations in the Senate, including White House officials and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have been ongoing for weeks. The Senate hopes to reach a deal and vote on it when Congress returns early next year.
A man believed to be a Russian soldier has ripped into President Vladimir Putin and other officials in an expletive-ridden video shared on social media.
The clip of the supposed soldier was uploaded to X, formerly Twitter, by Ukraine’s former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Herashchenko on December 23.
Ukrainian officials have claimed Russia has suffered more than 350,000 casualties since the war began. Moscow and international commentators have previously disputed Kyiv’s figures.
In the video, the soldier claimed to be close to Mar’inka—just southwest of the eastern city of Donetsk—and hit out at Putin, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and questioned where the rest of the country’s army was.
“I’m just mobilized. I’m in the Donetsk direction, near Mar’inka,” the soldier said. “What would we like to say to this government?” the soldier said.
gainst a backdrop of snow-capped birch trees, a group of women wearing white headscarves blend into the Russian winter landscape. In a country where public dissent is rare, their blunt message to Vladimir Putin stands out: bring our men back from Ukraine.
“We want a total demobilisation. Civilians should not be engaged in the fighting,” says one of the women at the start of the nine-minute address this month. “There are many of us, and our numbers will only grow.”
The woman is Maria Andreeva, 34, and she is one of the unofficial leaders of a newly emerging grassroots movement that has been gaining momentum in Russia in the past few weeks.
They are the wives and mothers of some of the 300,000 Russian men who were conscripted in September 2022, at a critical period for the Kremlin when it needed to shore up its troop numbers after Ukraine recaptured swathes of territory in the south and north of the country.
More than a year later, with their loved ones still on the battlefield, many women are staging public protests and writing open letters taking to task the official narrative that mobilised troops are required in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Why should our men who led a peaceful life have to go to Ukraine?” Andreeva, who lives in Moscow, says. “If our government decided to attack a smaller country, let the army fight but leave our men alone.”
Andreeva says the movement emerged in September after Andrei Kartapolov, the chair of parliament’s defence committee, told the press there would be no rotation for troops in Ukraine and they would return home after the special military operation was completed.
Russia has a history of female-led protests during wartime. Wives and mothers led an anti-war movement during the first Chechen war in 1994 that helped turn public opinion against the conflict and played a role in the Kremlin’s decision to stop the fighting.
The women were organised in well-run groups such as the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia (CSM), which had hundreds of regional hubs across the country, and, crucially, their message was aired on Russian television at a time when media was not fully subordinate to the state.
But since Putin took power in 1999, the Russian authorities have taken systematic steps to dismantle grassroots movements while also taking over independent outlets that could give them a platform.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin moved further, in effect criminalising all anti-war voices and handing out severe punishments to ordinary Russians for even small acts of civil protest against the invasion.
Andreeva communicates with other wives, sisters and mothers of soliders on Telegram, one of the last platforms that hosts independent voices. Most of their work is coordinated on the channel Put Domoy (The Way Home), which has amassed more than 35,000 members since it was founded in September. She says she is not afraid because she is fed up.
