The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, reaffirmed his claims to Ukrainian territories at a meeting with the US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow. According to tagesschau.de, Putin said at the talks on Thursday, 12 November, that there was only one possible border line with Ukraine for Russia, and that was the official Russian external border. In his understanding, this border also includes the Ukrainian administrative regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, annexed in 2022 in violation of international law, as well as the Crimean peninsula, annexed as early as 2014.
The two US representatives arrived in Moscow on Thursday morning. “The Russian president’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, received the US representatives Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at Moscow-Vnukovo airport,” the Russian news agency Interfax reported, as welt.de writes. According to tagesschau.de, the Kremlin published a video recording of the start of the talks.
Evacuation as an offer – and a contradiction
According to tagesschau.de, Putin also proposed a humanitarian operation for the Donbas town of Kostiantynivka in order to evacuate civilians from there, as most recently from the occupied frontline town of Oleshky. During a multi-day ceasefire at the end of October, hundreds of civilians had been able to leave Oleshky. In Kostiantynivka there were “still around 400 to 500 civilians”, Putin said. However, the situation there is less clear than in Oleshky in Kherson region: according to military bloggers, Ukrainian soldiers still have positions in Kostiantynivka.
Russia is demanding above all a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donetsk and Luhansk, the so-called Donbas, which Putin’s army has not been able to conquer in almost five years of war. Ukraine categorically rejects any cession of territory and points out that Russian troops have not advanced as far as the Moscow general staff reported to Putin.
Europe yes – but on Russian terms
According to tagesschau.de, Kushner raised the question of European participation in negotiations on ending the war. Russia had never been against talks with the Europeans, Putin replied. But the US should work with the Europeans so that they decide whether they want war or peace. Russia also demands that the Europeans designate a negotiator.
This stance appears to contradict the statement by the spokesman of the Russian presidential administration, Dmitry Peskov. On Wednesday he had made clear that the Moscow delegation in Abu Dhabi had no interest in meetings with the European representatives also present there.
According to their own words, the US envoys had travelled to Moscow to inform Putin about the talks with representatives of Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi and to persuade him to involve Europe. According to welt.de, Kushner had announced that in Moscow he would “take stock of the points discussed in Abu Dhabi” and seek “further progress”. In Abu Dhabi, delegations from both countries had negotiated under US mediation for the first time since February. A larger prisoner exchange was agreed, but otherwise there were no tangible results; the participants nevertheless declared that they wanted to continue talking.
Onward flight to Dublin – and a throttled satellite network
After the talks with Putin, Witkoff and Kushner flew on to Dublin to inform the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the Europeans. There, at the summit of the European Political Community on Thursday, heads of state and government from almost 50 countries discussed, among other things, Ukraine; an informal EU summit takes place on Friday, which will also address aid for Ukraine. In Dublin there will also be discussion of who should speak for the Europeans in the Ukraine negotiations. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sees Germany, France and Britain as responsible. This so-called E3 was a proven format, to which Italy and Poland were sometimes added, Merz said: “I see no problem at all with it staying that way.”
Meanwhile, according to tagesschau.de, Zelensky reported that the militarily important US satellite internet Starshield had again been throttled in Ukraine. The army had been recording disruptions again for several days. The EU Commission called the disruptions unacceptable. Starshield is the military variant of the satellite internet Starlink of the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk; the service had already been throttled for several days in mid-October.
The editorial assessment: For Kyiv the situation remains ambivalent. On the one hand, the talks between Washington and Moscow are getting under way again; on the other, Putin has set out the maximum position with his border demand – and skilfully passed the European question on to the US. Whether Dublin brings more than coordination depends on whether Europe names a common negotiator.
