Will Zelensky make peace with Putin if Russia doesn't leave Ukraine?

On November 3rd, NBC News revealed that some of Ukraine's European allies were quietly in talks with Kyiv about the conditions the country would need to see in order to negotiate peace with Russia according to two unnamed U.S. officials that were familiar with the situation.

The officials claimed that the conversations included what Ukraine might be willing to give up in order to reach a peace deal. However, the report was quickly denied by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“No leader of the United States or European Union, our partners — nobody puts pressure on us for us sitting at the negotiation table with Russia and give something away,” Zelensky explained during the press conference according to Politico.

It “has never been like this and will never be,” Zelensky continued. Ursula von der Leyen echoed the Ukrainian President's view in her comments and  reiterated the longstanding position of the European Union that Ukraine was in charge of its own fate.

“Ukraine is a sovereign country and [will] take sovereign decisions,” Von der Leyen explained, which was a callback to the 10-point peace plan that Kyiv had proposed in December 2022.

However, if Ukraine was being pressured, would it make a difference? It likely wouldn't for Zelensky, who's been firm since at least the summer of 2023 that Ukraine would not make peace with Moscow if Kyiv's demands to end the hostilities weren't met.

Zelensky outlined what Kyiv needed to see before Ukraine would be ready to talk about peace with Russia during a visit from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to the country's capital city in July 2023. At that time, Zelensky had taken peace negotiations off the table. 

The Ukrainian President's comments ruled out any peace negotiations in the future as long as the Kremlin’s armies continued to occupy Ukrainian land, and more importantly, indicated that peace would not been possible even if Kyiv’s counter-offensive had pushed Russia to Crimea’s border. 

"Regarding the situation on the battlefield and whether we will be ready for a diplomatic settlement… if we achieve the pre-24 February borders,” Zelensky began according to a transcript of his comments from Ukrainska Pravda. 

“The borders that were on 24 February are not our borders… that is why we emphasize once again,” Zelensky said, “Ukraine will be ready for one or other format of diplomacy when we are really at our borders. On our real borders, according to international law."

The comments were in line with what Zelensky had been saying for a number of months, namely that his government wouldn’t negotiate peace with Moscow unless Russia retreated back to Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.  

Zelensky had been quite adamant that Kyiv would return Crimea to the Ukrainian fold before the end of the war and voiced his desire to take the peninsula back through force if necessary, vowing in a video appearance at Davos in January 2023 to do so with global help. 

“Crimea is our land, our territory,” Zelensky told Davos attendees according to The Hill. “It is our sea and our mountains. Give us your weapons—we will return what is ours.”

The Hill noted at the time that the American view on recapturing the Crimean Peninsula had softened somewhat after months of little desire to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needed to give Kyiv a real shot at regaining control of the area, fearing an escalation of the war. 

However, that thinking changed in the halls of American power according to a report by the New York Times in January 2023 which stated that the Biden administration had come to realize Crimea could be an important bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.

Threatening control of Crimea would have made an excellent bargaining chip in any peace negotiation but the Ukrainian counter-offensive never completed a full breakthrough of Russian lines and did not see the same kind of larger success the country had in the summer of 2022. 

Ukraine may be in an arguably weaker position without a major success in its counter-offensive but that isn't likely to compel Zelensky toward peace while he still has the back of his Western allies, though in war anything is possible.