Leaders in the US, Russia and Ukraine have all softened their positions slightly in the last week, making the start of ceasefire talks in the coming months more likely.

Until now all parties to the war have taken maximalist positions, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saying he would not start talks until all Russian troops had left Ukraine’s territory and a return to the 1991 borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been adamant that Russia will not give up any of the territory it has annexed and continues to insisted on an “ironclad” guarantee that Ukraine will never join Nato – but those positions have been softened now.

The Kremlin said it is ready for direct talks with Zelenskiy, dropping its earlier objections on the basis that he is an “illegitimate president”, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on February 5.

"An analysis by our country that has been repeatedly voiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin shows that Mr. Zelenskiy has big problems de jure in terms of his legitimacy, but the Russian side remains open to negotiations even despite this," Peskov told journalists.

Zelenskiy’s presidential term officially expired last May, but as the Ukrainian constitution forbids elections while the country is under martial law, his term has been extended indefinitely until a ceasefire is agreed.

Zelenskiy also softened his position, saying for the first time in over two years this week that he was ready to meet Putin in person in a face-to-face meeting, despite banning himself from direct contact with the Russian leaders in October 2022 by decree.

Surprisingly, the US position has also moved a little closer to Russia’s after Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that the world has become a “multipolar” order.

On February 1, Marco Rubio said that the world became unipolar after the Cold War, but multipolarity is returning, with other countries like China and Russia playing a role in world politics again. Rubio called the existence of a unipolar world abnormal and anomalous. According to him, the United States “has become a kind of world government in many cases, trying to solve every problem,” and “terrible things are happening in the world.”

“Eventually you’re going to get back to the point where you have a multipolar world, multiple great powers in different parts of the planet,” Rubio said

For years Putin has complained about the “unipolar” world order led by a US hegemony and called for a multipolar order to replace it, a call backed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Kremlin said it welcomed Rubio's multipolarity remarks.

"This corresponds to our understanding, our vision and the vision of our president. Therefore, yes, we welcome such statements," Peskov said.

Rubio has also suggested that he will take a pragmatic line in any talks and called on both sides to “compromise”, which has been interpreted to mean he expects that Ukraine will have to concede control over some of the 20% of Ukrainian territory currently under Russian control.

A leak from the Kremlin at the end of last year suggested that there is “limited wiggle room” in negotiations over territory and the Kremlin is prepared to swap land occupied by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in its Kursk region for land currently occupied by Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) in Donbas. Nevertheless, Putin has repeatedly said that Kyiv will have to account for “realities on the ground”, widely interpreted to mean that Putin intends to hang on to most of the land Russia has occupied including the Crimea, the land bridge that connects the Russian border to the Crimea, and most of the four regions annexed by Russia in 2022.

Another obstacle to overcome is who will participate in the negotiations. Putin wants a bilateral negotiation between the Kremlin and the White House. Zelenskiy has called for four-way talks that also include Kyiv and the EU. Putin said last week that it was “too early” to talk about four-way talks.

A rough timetable for negotiations has emerged that kicks off with a Ramstein meeting of military heads on February 12 where more military support will be pledged to make it clear that Ukraine will be provided with the means to continue the fight if needs be to bolster its negotiating position in talks with Russia.

On February 14-16, National Security Advisor Keith Kellogg and special envoy for Ukraine will present his much anticipated plan to end the conflict at the upcoming Munich Security Conference. US President Donald Trump has called for the conflict to be ended within the first 100 days of his presidency (April 30). No details of the plan have been released, although there has been a lot of speculation as to what it might contain. Kellogg has only said his plan is based on “peace through strength.”

Following the Munich conference, Kellogg is due to make his first trip to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy and thrash out the details of an acceptable ceasefire deal.

The Ukrainian leader is planning to travel to several countries in the Gulf region after the Munich conference, US sources say to bolster Ukraine’s support in the Middle East.

The markets are anticipating a deal with Ukraine’s GDP warrants gaining strongly in the last three months and added to those gains this week. Dollar notes due in 2035 and 2036 were trading at the strongest levels since they were issued last year, Ukrainska Pravda reports.

Kellogg has signalled that the US would like to see elections held in Ukraine after a ceasefire, while Trump has indicated that access to Ukraine’s critical mineral deposits could be part of a settlement in return for US support.

Ceasefire plan

The upcoming ceasefire talks will be the third attempt at bringing the war to an end, following the failed Istanbul peace deal in 2022. That was followed by a tentative attempt to start talks to end Russia’s bombing of Ukraine’s energy assets in August, hosted by Qatar, which were quickly cancelled following Ukraine’s Kursk incursion where the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) captured hundreds of kilometres of Russian territory in a lightning invasion. Hopes for talks had been building in the middle of 2024 and Zelenskiy said several times that he hoped to bring the war to an end that year.

In the meantime ahead of the latest attempt to end the fighting, Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) has been left in limbo as the level of US support for Ukraine remains unclear. Missing money, delayed arms deliveries and demands for mining deals, have dominated the headlines as Zelenskiy lobbies the White House to continue its fulsome support in the face of a slow collapse of Ukraine’s defences in Donbas.

Bankova said talks with the White House have reached an “active” stage, but no agreements on new military packages have been reached yet. Indeed, Trump briefly cut off military supply deliveries last week, until officials in the State Department persuaded him to resume them, The New York Times (NYT) reported. Zelenskiy said talks are ongoing, but there is no reduction in military support at present.

“[US support] has not been stopped; it continues, and I am grateful to the US for this. Of course, we are not talking about new packages yet – it is too early to discuss that", Zelenskiy said at a press conference in Kyiv following a meeting with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on February 5.

All eyes will be on Kellogg’s Munich appearance and the details of the Trump administration’s “plan to end the war”. Among the anticipated components of the plan are a potential war freeze, the unclear status of Russian-occupied territories and the provision of unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine.

Zelenskiy has previously said that Nato membership is the “cheapest” option for the West and the most reliable security guarantee, and has also said he would accept a “partial” membership, where only those Ukrainian territories under government control are included in the security deal – the so-called West German scenario. But so far all of Ukraine’s allies have been very reluctant to offer Kyiv true security deals.

The Ukrainian president put the cat among the pigeons this week saying that if the West was not willing to take Ukraine into Nato or secure its territory then Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons to deter Russia from future attacks. The Kremlin said Zelenskiy's call was “madness”, although Putin has repeatedly, but indirectly, threatened to use nuclear weapons to bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end.