Another day, another round of Russian saber-rattling on one hand and outlines of an end to the war in Ukraine on the other — is this time any different? According to a new report from Reuters, the Russian strongman is eyeing the “contours” of a peace deal that could be hammered out with President Trump.

This comes at a time when Russia has the upper hand in eastern Ukraine but its economy is showing new signs of buckling. It comes amid fast-paced events. No sooner did President Biden give Ukraine the okay to use American ATACMS missiles against targets in Russia than Ukraine fired about a half-dozen of the weapons into the Bryansk region Tuesday morning. 

After more than a thousand days since Russia launched its full scale invasion, much of Ukraine — and now, parts of Russia abutting it — remain an active conflict zone. It increasingly appears that the main protagonists have their sights as much on the calendar as they do on the battlefield. The countdown to Trump’s swearing-in on January 20 is well under way. 

According to the report of Reuters, made on the basis of conversations with five current and former Russian officials, the Kremlin could agree in general terms to freeze the conflict along the main frontline. Ensuing negotiations would be conducted to precisely define the borders of four regions: the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics plus the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. Russia would also reportedly give up parts of the territory that it currently occupies in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions.

That forecast should come with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has previously said that freezing the conflict would be unacceptable. On Wednesday he reiterated that stance. Plus, too, last June President Putin said that for there to be peace talks Ukraine would have to withdraw its troops from all four of those regions, though that was before Trump became President-elect.

Another important condition for a deal, according to the Reuters report, is that Ukraine would not join NATO — a hot-button issue that it appears the Kremlin may try to temper by claiming an openness to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv. Some of these issues, such as demands that Ukraine place limits on its number of troops and stop allegedly discriminating against use of the Russian language, were included in the Istanbul peace agreement prepared with Turkish mediation in the spring of 2022.

That pact has not been adopted. Two of the Russian officials cited in the report said that, as per the unrealized Istanbul agreement, Ukraine would agree to permanent neutrality in exchange for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the UN: America, Great Britain, France, Communist China, and Russia.

According Reuters Russian sources, the future status of Crimea, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014, is non-negotiable. For President Zelensky, Crimea is integral to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. From the incoming Trump administration, the signals have been mixed and may not come into focus until January. 

The decision by the Biden administration to allow use of the ATACMS for strikes deep inside Russia could have the knock-on effect of hardening the Kremlin’s eventual demands. Mr. Biden, of course, will be freed from any expectation to untangle all of this by the time his successor assumes power.

Trump’s incoming communications director, Steven Cheung, told Reuters that Trump “is the only person who can bring both sides together to negotiate peace and work to end the war and [bring] an end to the killing.” Yet mitigating some of the pressure on Trump to do that in as timely as fashion as he has pledged are the economic headwinds facing Russia.

Years of Western sanctions against Moscow, while not a uniformly effective tool for diplomatic coercion, are adding to Russia’s economy Mr. Putin’s own “Ukraine drain.” Despite Mr. Putin’s staged smiles at the BRICS conference he hosted in October, Russia is hardly a nation of endless resources.

Under Mr. Putin’s ironfisted rule, a once promising post-Soviet economy has turned into a war regime dependent on oil and an ability to keep turning out weapons. Inflation is now running at close to 10 percent and official interest rates are more than double that. The workforce is thinning and international investment has dwindled. 

Ironically, the G7’s attempts to limit Moscow’s crude oil exports did not cripple the economy — according to the published figures, growth accelerated to 3.6 percent last year and in 2024, too. However, it is now the Bank of Russia that is forecasting a slump, one on the order of a meager half-percent growth next year. 

This all goes back to Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine. The price of crude oil is not the only thing falling fast— the Kremlin just cut compensation for its war wounded by two-thirds. Until recently, each injured soldier was entitled to three million rubles, or about $30,000. It is now down to one million rubles, or around $10,000. 

It has been estimated that compensation paid out to the families of the nearly 700,000 dead and wounded in Ukraine has already cost the Kremlin the equivalent of a staggering $21 billion. The official who enacted the decision to slash the payments is the country’s new deputy defense minister, Anna Tsivilyova — first cousin once removed of Vladimir Putin. The decision-maker in Russia is clearly feeling the pinch.