Report: Secret Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal on the Cards

Facts

• Seasoned American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh has claimed that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov are secretly negotiating a deal to end the war. The report — published on his Substack — cites anonymous sources allegedly in the US intelligence sphere.¹
• According to Hersh, Moscow could allow Kyiv to join NATO — though the Western military alliance will be barred from posting either soldiers or offensive weapons in Ukraine — provided Crimea is allowed to remain with Russia and elections are held in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson — the regions annexed by Moscow.²
• Hersh's claims contradict Davyd Arakhamiia — head of Ukraine's leading party who led the Ukrainian delegation at Turkey-brokered peace talks with the Russians in 2022 — who had previously claimed that Moscow had promised peace to Kyiv if it dropped its ambition to join NATO.³
• The report follows Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy's recent declaration that there would be no peace talks if Russian troops remained on Ukrainian soil, adding, 'We cannot recognize our territories as the territories of the Russian Federation.'⁴
• Last month, the German tabloid BILD had reported that US Pres. Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have discussed putting pressure on Ukraine to negotiate with Russia by limiting arm supplies to Kyiv. The US State Department, however, quickly denied the report, claiming that negotiations are 'a matter for Ukraine to decide.'⁵
• The development comes after Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin — citing NATO 'activities'— signed an executive order to immediately increase the number of serving army soldiers by around 15%, or some 170K troops, bringing the overall number of Russian military personnel to about 2.2M.⁶

Sources: ¹Seymour Hersh, ²TASS (a), ³Ukrainska Pravda, ⁴Nikkei Asia, ⁵TASS (b) and ⁶The Guardian.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by The Wall Street Journal. The war with Russia is in a stalemate. The Ukrainian counteroffensive hasn't met expectations, war fatigue is growing, and Ukrainians face a bleak winter. Kyiv's refusal to negotiate with Moscow has only caused the country heavy battlefield casualties, and it would take a massive technological leap to break the status quo. While the West stays committed to supporting Ukraine, as a sense of exhaustion and battle fatigue sets in, perhaps now is the right time to start thinking about how the war can be brought to a close.
• Anti-Russia narrative, as provided by Ukrainska Pravda. Considering the Kremlin couldn't be trusted to uphold a peace agreement, Ukraine should refrain from offering neutrality in exchange for an end to the war and continue to make Russia politically, militarily, and economically weaker. It wasn't Zelenskyy but Putin who sent troops into Ukraine last year, which is why it should be Putin, not Zelenskyy, who must first vacate annexed Ukrainian territories and end its aggression if it wants lasting peace in the region.
• Narrative C, as provided by Asia Times. While Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh is a renowned investigative journalist, his self-published report relies on anonymous and uncorroborated sources — a common practice that has seen some of his previous reports tossed out. More specifically, the details of these so-called peace talks appear to contradict well-known facts about the status of the war. As much as many may want this report to be accurate, until it's verified, it must be taken with a grain of salt.

Predictions