Putin addresses Ukraine with Russia’s first public ceasefire proposal: Ukraine must withdraw troops from DPR, LPR, Kherson, Zaporozhye regions+notify NATO it will not move forward with alliance talks.

I mean they are demands. You make demands when you have overwhelmingly dominated your opponent, which Russia has.

Russia is preparing for war with NATO. This is most likely Putins final public proposal for peace so the world can see Russia is not the aggressor in this situation. Everyone knows they’re making gains on the battlefield and the US has already publicly stated Ukraine won’t be a part of nato. So what is there to really fight about other than upholding Americas honor?

This isn't reasonable, this is crazily generous, especially considering the state of the war. Only thing Ukraine lose is places that already publicly stated they don't want to be in Ukraine. But in that proposition they don't lose Odessa and with it the Black Sea access, they don't lose Kharkov, they stay as viable state instead of rump remains, they don't have to denazify, they won't have to change government, and the most importantly, killing stops now.

Yeah, no chance their handlers will allow them to agree.

I haven't kept up with shit in Ukraine well the past few months but this was my uneducated, gut reaction as well. Seems super reasonable.

Of course, they won't be going for it since their donors won't let them.

Definitely a reasonable point to start negotiations. The Russians barely hold anything in Kherson, but you don't start where you want. Otherwise, you don't have any leeway in negotiations.

I was honestly surprised.

Ukraine will end up with worse terms though, since they will reject these.

They’ve probably been offering this deal privately for more than a year now. I guess at this point they feel it’s been long enough to demonstrate that Ukraine can’t kick them out even with NATO weapons. They’re making the offer public to put pressure on Zelenskyy and make him seem less reasonable with his completely unrealistic hard position of pre-2014 borders.

How well it will work I don’t know.

public proposal to cut through the narratives they're spinning in Kiev, i imagine the expectation is that Ukrainians & especially conscripts will hear 'lose the troublesome provinces for peace' and rally to pressure the government. for Russia, a withdrawal of Ukraine's troops will achieve what would probably take months in terms of territory, despite the 'Ukraine is collapsing' hype Russia hasn't exactly been making rapid progress

my best guess would be that this weekend is the swiss peace summit where they invited like ninety countries but not russia. putting out the barest, most basic sounding demands is an easy play when you aren’t even invited to the current version of peace talks. it’ll make ukraine’s demands for crimea, belgorod, kaliningrad, and billion dollar annual reparations look ridiculous in a few days, if the talks even get that far. you’re right that the west isn’t done, but the west is the one cooking up this swiss conference

The real reason is the west has given Russia every reason to believe they’re about to be hit with a nuclear bomb at any given moment. This isn’t really Russia changing their strategy or anything, I see this as more about Russia openly declaring they would rather have peace than nuclear war one last time.

My uneducated guess? Putin has seen better polling then what’s made people public and figures that he better get going on a deal now because he doesn’t think the November elections are going to go his way.

iirc DPR and LPR are already part of Russia, they would need to do new paperwork on Kherson and Zapo though

EDIT: I did not recall correctly

The only change mentioned is that they will have troops withdrawn, so I don't know if Putin is even looking for any territorial changes. Maybe he'll expect recognition of a plebiscite after the troops are withdrawn, maybe the territories will remain a part of Ukraine. I doubt anyone wants for them to form a nation.