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The Biden administration dismissed on Friday a call by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, showing no sign that flagging political support for American military aid to Kyiv had made President Biden more inclined to make concessions to Moscow.<\/p>\n
During his two-hour interview<\/a> at the Kremlin with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now broadcasts independently online, Mr. Putin offered long defenses of his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 but said he was prepared to settle the conflict diplomatically.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are willing to negotiate,\u201d Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson in the interview, which was released on Thursday. \u201cYou should tell the current Ukrainian leadership to stop and come to the negotiating table,\u201d he added, referring to the U.S. government.<\/p>\n The Russian leader spoke at a moment of apparent leverage, following the failure of a vaunted Ukrainian summer counteroffensive to achieve substantial gains and as the Biden administration is struggling to win congressional approval for desperately needed additional military aid for Kyiv.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It is not the first time Mr. Putin has expressed willingness to negotiate over the fate of Ukraine, and Western officials have long been skeptical of his intentions. But because it was his first interview with an American media figure since the invasion, his call for talks has extra resonance, analysts said.<\/p>\n U.S. and Ukrainian officials say that the best Ukraine\u2019s military can hope for in the coming year, especially without more American aid, is to defend its current positions. Even so, Biden officials say they are not entertaining the idea of pressing Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to negotiate with Mr. Putin.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth we and President Zelensky have said numerous times that we believe this war will end through negotiations,\u201d a National Security Council spokesman said in a statement. \u201cDespite Mr. Putin\u2019s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. officials had previously assessed that Mr. Putin had no intention of negotiating seriously until after the U.S. presidential election in November. Mr. Putin, they say, wants to wait to see whether former President Donald J. Trump might return to the White House and offer him more favorable terms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an interview last spring, Mr. Trump said the \u201chorrible\u201d conflict in Ukraine must come to an immediate end and that if re-elected, he would broker a deal to \u201cend that war in one day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Biden administration has supported Ukraine\u2019s stated desire to reclaim territory that Russia has occupied since its invasion. Russia now occupies around 18 percent of Ukrainian land.<\/p>\n U.S. officials have also long insisted that, despite the more than $75 billion in aid the United States has supplied to Ukraine, it is not for Washington to dictate whether Kyiv engages in peace talks and what on terms. \u201cUltimately, it\u2019s up to Ukraine to decide its path on negotiations,\u201d the National Security Council statement said.<\/p>\n Many analysts were also skeptical of Mr. Putin\u2019s intentions. Sergey Radchenko, a Russia historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said Mr. Putin should not be trusted.<\/p>\n Mr. Radchenko said Mr. Putin might be engaging in what during Soviet times was known as a \u201cpeace offensive\u201d \u2014 an insincere tactical feint whose goal, he said, was \u201cto present a reasonable face to the outside world: \u2018Oh yeah, of course we want peace \u2014 it\u2019s just the other side that doesn\u2019t want to talk.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some Western officials believe Mr. Putin may also have his domestic audience in mind when he talks about a negotiated end to the war. Polls in Russia have shown that Russian citizens would welcome a settlement to end the conflict that has shaken their economy and produced tens of thousands of casualties<\/a>.<\/p>\n Talk of peace could also win Mr. Putin favor among nations in the so-called global south \u2014 nations in South America, Asia and Africa, including India and South Africa, that are unaligned in the Ukraine conflict. Most of those countries have suffered from higher energy and food prices caused by the war.<\/p>\n Mr. Putin seemed to be exploiting Republican opposition to Mr. Biden\u2019s funding request for Ukraine, echoing critiques made in recent weeks by some conservative members of Congress. \u201cYou have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt \u2014 more than $33 trillion. You have nothing better to do, so you should fight in Ukraine?\u201d Mr. Putin asked.<\/p>\n Alternatively, Mr. Radchenko said, Mr. Putin might be willing to make some unexpected concessions for a peace deal that leaves Russia with a foothold in eastern Ukraine, \u201cand then use that as a basis for either further aggression against Ukraine, or as leverage to force a preferred government on Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst at the RAND Corporation, said it was possible that Mr. Putin had been bluffing all along about talks. But he said it was worth engaging the Kremlin in private to determine Mr. Putin\u2019s actual demands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNobody knows for sure \u2014 and nobody can know for sure unless they try,\u201d Mr. Charap said. He added that it was notable that Mr. Putin had not told Mr. Carlson that he had preconditions for talks, such as the removal of Mr. Zelensky\u2019s government.<\/p>\n Mr. Charap also noted that Russia and Ukraine were already negotiating on a number of matters, including prisoner-of-war swaps and Ukrainian exports from its Black Sea ports.<\/p>\n Regardless of Mr. Putin\u2019s intentions, analysts and Western officials say that a major obstacle to potential talks is the unwillingness of Ukraine\u2019s public to compromise with an invader that has committed atrocities in their country.<\/p>\n \u201cZelensky is worried about the domestic political consequences of pursuing a different tactic,\u201d Mr. Charap said.<\/p>\n \u201cBarring a Ukrainian demand signal\u201d for peace talks, \u201cthere\u2019s unlikely to be a push from Washington,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n