Nick Paton Walsh
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s signaling this week that he is open to peace talks should be viewed with vast, overshadowing caveats, and the weight of Ukraine’s - and the West’s - past experience of Russian diplomacy.
Friday saw a wealth of noise about negotiation, in the same month Moscow launched a third invasion of Ukraine from the north of Kharkiv.
The Reuters news agency cited four sources, in a report from two deeply experienced and connected Russia reporters, that Moscow was willing to consider peace talks which would freeze the current Russian occupation of about a fifth of Ukraine.
Putin responded to that report by suggesting Russia was willing to talk peace, based on earlier agreements. He hinted at an aborted deal in Istanbul, just after the war began, in 2022, which fell apart, mostly because Moscow’s forces were still rampaging across Ukrainian territory, and massacres around Kyiv had come to light.
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