Russian President Vladimir Putin made his duplicitous position crystal clear on this week when he said he was “willing to negotiate with the United States about the war in Ukraine” but kept up his insistence about Ukraine’s full capitulation.
That same day, during a Russian Security Council meeting alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “reiterated Russia’s willingness to engage in peace negotiations with the U.S.;” however, but added that any peace settlement should “eliminate the root causes” of the war in Ukraine.

What are these “root causes”? Lavrov had described them last month as NATO’s “aggressive absorption” of Eastern Europe — — and alleged Ukrainian government hostility toward ethnic Russians, their culture, their media and their language.
But let’s be real here — NATO had nothing to do with this. Mikhail Gorbachev, the late former leader of the Soviet Union, acknowledged there had been no promises not to enlarge NATO at the end of the Cold War.