Ukraine wants peace talks in wake of Russia incursion, but not directly with Putin

KYIV — Ukraine’s attack into Russia is strengthening Kyiv’s hand to push for peace talks, potentially using a framework that could proceed even as the Kremlin refuses to send its diplomats to face-to-face meetings.
The peace pact model increasingly being discussed in Kyiv takes its inspiration from the July 2022 agreement that allowed Ukraine to resume grain exports out of the Black Sea. Under that diplomatic format, Russia and Ukraine worked on separate agreements, overseen by the U.N. and Turkey as intermediaries, without a direct Moscow-Kyiv accord.
In Kyiv, there is a belief that its troops’ lightning strike across the border into the Russian region of Kursk has bolstered Ukraine’s negotiating position.
“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade [Russia] to enter a fair negotiation process,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said late last week.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that he is in no mood to talk, however.
“What kind of negotiations can we talk about with people who indiscriminately attack the civilian population, and civilian infrastructure, or try to create threats to nuclear power facilities? What can we even talk about with them?” Putin said without a hint of irony, given Russia’s track record of leveling Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and resorting to blackmail over the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia power station.  
The Black Sea model would bridge this impasse, two senior Ukrainian officials told POLITICO. “That is the plan we are aiming for,” an official close to the Ukrainian presidential office said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 
The basis for what Ukraine wants is a 10-point plan drawn up by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2022 — covering an array of topics such as food and energy security, the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Russian troops. That format has now accelerated with Andriy Yermak, head of the president’s office and Zelenskyy’s main foreign policy official, telling European Pravda that 10 working groups — including ambassadors and experts — were being set up to draw up action plans and timelines.
Yermak also raised the Black Sea deal as a potential format: “We did not have negotiations with Russia. We had negotiations with Türkiye and the U.N., and they negotiated with Russia.  It was a success. The corridor operated for a year — there were a lot of problems, but it worked. We must acknowledge that. A similar format could be used again.”
But there’s still a long way ahead for Kyiv. It has to work on a joint peace plan with countries that agreed to help it implement three initial peace formula points —  nuclear and energy security, food security and the return of prisoners — agreed during a first peace summit in Switzerland in June.
Zelenskyy wants a joint peace proposal to come out of the meetings Ukraine initiated during that summit. Russia-friendly countries taking part in the implementation of the peace program are supposed to present their proposals to Moscow during a second peace summit Kyiv wants to organize by the end of this year.
But Russia has already said it would not come to that summit and called Ukraine’s peace formula “completely unacceptable” for the Kremlin.
So, the Ukrainians decided Moscow needed some encouragement, saying raids on Russia would stop when a peace deal is secured.
“The sooner Russia agrees to the restoration of a just peace, in particular, based on a peace formula that leads to such a peace, the sooner the raids of Ukrainian defense forces on Russian territory will stop,” Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson of Ukrainian foreign ministry, said at a briefing in Kyiv last week.
Turkey has made little secret of its desire to again act as an intermediary to secure a peace deal. “Türkiye, as always, is ready to facilitate the process,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in June. “We will not shy away from putting further efforts.”
POLITICO contacted the Turkish foreign ministry for further comment but received no response.