Sources close to the Kremlin say that Russian President Vladimir Putin remains focused on capturing the rest of Ukraine’s Donbas region and is more likely to escalate the war than accept a ceasefire along current front lines.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to move toward peace talks with Kyiv and is instead expected to intensify the war in Ukraine, according to three sources close to the Kremlin who spoke to Reuters.
The report comes as President Donald Trump continues to press for a negotiated end to the war, now in its fifth year. Trump said Monday that Putin wanted the conflict to end and that a resolution was “closer than people realize.”
Trump held separate calls last week with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also met Zelenskyy on Wednesday at the NATO summit, where the Ukrainian president said the two discussed “ideas to bring peace closer.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Two of the Kremlin-connected sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Putin was more likely to escalate the war than compromise. One source who meets regularly with the Russian president described a “high probability” of escalation in the coming months.
One person familiar with Putin’s thinking said he had “dug in his heels” on capturing the rest of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Russian forces have made slower progress this year. The same source said Putin recently rebuked advisers who suggested a compromise based on a ceasefire along the current front lines.
A second source said Putin believes Russia will soon capture Donbas.
Putin publicly rejected Zelenskyy’s June call for a meeting and ceasefire.
“Russia is ready for a peaceful resolution but has enough capability to act independently and continue the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to a request for comment.
A senior Ukrainian official, responding to a request for comment to Zelenskyy’s office, said Kyiv’s intelligence reports in recent months indicate Putin is preparing for additional military steps rather than peace. The official said those steps could include new operations in Ukraine or a possible attack on another European country.
Some Western military analysts have said Russia may need a mandatory draft of fighting-age men to capture all of Donbas. Such a move would be politically unpopular and is something Putin has been reluctant to do since early in the war.
Russian military experts have increasingly discussed escalation publicly, including potential attacks on European targets such as NATO bases in the Baltic countries.
That type of action would risk direct confrontation with the U.S.-led alliance and test NATO’s Article 5 commitment that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank in London, said Russia could attempt isolated attacks to create division within NATO, similar to a recent Russian drone strike on Romania.
“The Russians would not be aiming for a war with NATO. But it could be used to divide NATO over how to respond,” Watling said.
Watling said heightened tension with NATO could also give Putin a domestic political rationale for military conscription.
Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, ports and storage depots have contributed to fuel shortages, bringing more of the war’s consequences to Russian civilians. Putin’s approval rating remains high, but a recent poll showed it had fallen to its lowest level since the war began in 2022.
Ukraine’s allies have described recent developments as a shift in momentum and have called for additional economic sanctions to pressure Putin to end the conflict. But one source who meets Putin regularly said Ukraine’s recent successes have angered the Russian president and made him more determined to respond forcefully.
Russia has launched two major drone and missile attacks on Ukraine in the past week, including strikes on Kyiv, killing dozens of civilians. Moscow said the attacks hit military targets.
In televised comments to generals last week, Putin said Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure meant Russia would seek to seize more Ukrainian land along the border beyond Donbas as a “security zone.”
Andrei Ilnitsky, a former Russian Defense Ministry official, wrote in a June 29 column for the Kommersant newspaper that escalation could begin with the destruction of 30 major industrial sites in Ukraine, including a steel plant and the port of Odesa.
Russia has already inflicted widespread damage on commercial enterprises and ports across Ukraine, while repeated strikes on power facilities have disrupted production and exports.
Ilnitsky wrote that a next phase could include strikes on NATO bases in the Baltic states and Romania, as well as European Union facilities producing long-range drones and missiles for Ukraine.
Asked about Ilnitsky’s column, Peskov told reporters this week that Russia should strengthen its security and cannot “close its eyes” to Europe’s militarization.
Talk of escalation comes as Russia’s battlefield gains have slowed, raising questions about the time and casualties required to take Donbas.
About 2 million soldiers have been killed, wounded or gone missing since Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, including 1.4 million Russians, according to a recent estimate by the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Neither Russia nor Ukraine releases military casualty figures.
Russia has struggled this year along the 1,200-kilometer, or 745-mile, front line as Ukrainian drones have helped offset Russia’s numerical troop advantage. In recent weeks, Russian forces have been pushing into Kostiantynivka, an eastern city that is part of Ukraine’s “fortress belt,” a critical defensive line in the Donetsk region.
Putin said July 3 that Russian forces had seized Kostiantynivka. Ukraine denied the claim.
A day later, during his call with Trump, Putin sought to persuade the U.S. president that Russia would capture the remaining fifth of the Donetsk region of Donbas still controlled by Ukraine.
The source who meets Putin regularly said the Russian president views control of the region as a matter of principle and “needs some kind of victory.”
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