Putin expected to demand alliance roll back its military footprint to 1997 levels

Russia will attempt to use a fresh round of Ukraine peace talks to secure concessions that weaken Nato’s defences.

Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy aide, said Europe should be included in the negotiations between Russian, Ukrainian and American officials because the Continent would be crucial to reaching an agreement.

But diplomatic sources told The Telegraph that Russia’s motive for including European nations was to use the next round of talks to win concessions over Nato expansion, which Vladimir Putin has called the “root cause” of the war.

The Kremlin has previously suggested the Russian president may be willing to compromise on other issues if his core demands are met, essentially stripping Ukraine of its sovereignty and forcing Nato to roll back its eastward growth.

Putin will probably demand that Nato’s footprint in Europe be reduced to its 1997 level, before former Eastern bloc countries began joining the alliance.

That would mean a potential withdrawal of Nato troops from Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Finland, which joined the alliance in 2023. All five countries share a border with Russia.

Last week, Russia agreed to hold technical three-way talks in Abu Dhabi next month after a lengthy pause in the US-mediated negotiations.

In an interview with state media, Mr Ushakov said he did not expect the meeting to yield significant progress, describing it as a “trial run”.

Both European and Ukrainian officials agreed that they would be willing to discuss the “wider context of post-war security arrangements in Europe” at the talks in Abu Dhabi.

The proposal was delivered by Steve Witkoff, a US presidential envoy, during a three-hour meeting with Putin in St Petersburg last week.

Senior sources have insisted that Europe’s rejection of Russia’s demands remains firm.

“Our position remains the same as in January 2022,” one European official said, referring to a letter sent to Moscow by Jens Stoltenberg, the former Nato secretary-general.

At the time, Putin suggested that meeting his demands would avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But while the Western alliance agreed to discuss his concerns, it ruled out withdrawing troops and nuclear weapons from former Soviet states.