Russia & Ukraine Holding ‘Limited Talks’ In Qatar

Bloomberg has reported that Russia and Ukraine have been conducting “limited talks” in Qatar, citing unnamed Russian sources. The talks are said to focus on preventing threats to each country’s nuclear facilities as the war continues.

The same report cited Ukrainian sources who say the contacts thus far have only focused on prisoner exchanges, which has resulted in several major swaps throughout the conflict. The latest exchange was Wednesday, involving 25 POWs returned on each side.

But it’s clear that any direct negotiations under the incoming Trump administration is likely to grow out of these existing ‘limited’ contacts and exchanges. The Kremlin on Thursday offered ‘no comment’ when asked about Bloomberg’s reporting.

Despite the Trump campaign rhetoric of a speedy negotiation track which will reach a permanent truce soon after he enters office, Trump’s team has since acknowledge that talks are likely to take much longer.

A Wednesday Reuters report said, “Advisers to President-elect Donald Trump now concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, a sharp reality check on his biggest foreign policy promise – to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.”

“Two Trump associates, who have discussed the war in Ukraine with the president-elect, told Reuters they were looking at a timeline of months to resolve the conflict, describing the Day One promises as a combination of campaign bluster and a lack of appreciation of the intractability of the conflict and the time it takes to staff up a new administration,” the report continued.

Keith Kellog, Trump’s incoming envoy for the Russia-Ukraine crisis, has expressed hope that a deal can be secured within the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which has a far longer timeline that what’s been previously given.

Trump’s incoming national security advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz, has said it will be a priority of the new Trump administration to get Ukraine to lower its conscription age from 25 to 18 in order to “stabilize” the battlefield. This is all a tacit admission that Russia is in the driver’s seat and that Ukraine currently has little real leverage.

As for one area Moscow is expected to remain resolute on, Bloomberg details:

Russia will demand Ukraine drastically cut back military ties with the NATO alliance and become a neutral state with a limited army in any talks with incoming US President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Increasingly confident he has the advantage on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to achieve his goal that Kyiv never join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and that limits are placed on its military capacity, said the people with knowledge of Kremlin thinking who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information.

Additionally, Russian media has quoted top national security official Dmitry Medvedev to say that Ukraine won’t ever get a ‘Germany-style reunification’ deal:

Suggestions that Ukraine could get a security deal similar to West Germany after World War II are betting on the dissolution of Russia, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.

West Germany joined NATO in 1955, while East Germany remained part of the Soviet bloc until reunification in 1990. Moscow did not oppose the move, as the US and its allies had assured the USSR’s leaders that Western troops would not go beyond Germany’s eastern border. NATO’s breach of that promise is the primary cause of the current animosity between Russia and the West, according to Russian officials.

“Who would honestly consider a scenario, in which a nuclear power relinquishes something to the ugly dwarf named Ukraine?” Medvedev wrote on Telegram. “It means they can only count on Russia’s dissolution.”

Sen. Marco Rubio calls for concessions in resolving the Ukraine-Russia war, adding “there is no way Russia takes all of Ukraine,” while it is also “unrealistic” that Ukraine will push Russia back to where it began at the start of the conflict. https://t.co/wwrk9C1Q2F pic.twitter.com/zXm91SW303

— ABC News (@ABC) January 15, 2025

Top Russian leaders, including President Putin himself, have consistently spoken with the assumption that the four annexed territories of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia will remain Russia’s forever.