Did Vladimir Putin launch a new offensive in Ukraine as a means to force Kyiv and its Western allies into a cease-fire? Russian forces attacked along the Kharkiv line earlier this month, with only minimal gains but deploying a lot more kinetic force to the offensive nonetheless. Putin also ordered tactical-nuke drills just behind the Ukraine front too, a pointed warning to the West about the risks of a Russian collapse.

With all of that as prelude, it appears that Putin may have been using his "escalate to de-escalate" doctrine. According to Reuters, Putin wants a cease-fire -- one that recognizes Putin's annexation of territories his forces hold now:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to halt the war in Ukraine with a negotiated ceasefire that recognises the current battlefield lines, four Russian sources told Reuters, saying he is prepared to fight on if Kyiv and the West do not respond.

Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin's entourage, said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's decision to rule out talks.

This isn't the first time that Putin has sent out feelers for a peace deal. Five months ago, to the day, the New York Times reported that Putin wanted the same deal -- a cease-fire and recognition of Russian sovereignty in the Donbas and Crimea. At that time, Putin had been seeking a deal for almost a year:

Mr. Putin has been signaling through intermediaries since at least September that he is open to a cease-fire that freezes the fighting along the current lines, far short of his ambitions to dominate Ukraine, two former senior Russian officials close to the Kremlin and American and international officials who have received the message from Mr. Putin’s envoys say.

In fact, Mr. Putin also sent out feelers for a cease-fire deal a year earlier, in the fall of 2022, according to American officials. That quiet overture, not previously reported, came after Ukraine routed Russia’s army in the country’s northeast. Mr. Putin indicated that he was satisfied with Russia’s captured territory and ready for an armistice, they said.

Rest assured that Putin isn't offering this deal out of the kindness of his heart. Russia bit off far more than they could chew with their invasion of Ukraine, failing miserably everywhere except territory they had already seized in 2014. Last year and in 2022, the truce offer looked like a ruse by which to disarm Ukraine for a final conquest, a la Czechoslovakia in 1938. Parallels to "peace in our time" and Neville Chamberlain remain a little too fresh in Western memory to fall for the same trick again.

At this point, though, it may not be a trick. Even with his renewed offensive in northeastern Ukraine, the Russian army has proven unable to provide any real game-changer on lines that have been essentially static for two years now. Ukraine has done better by threatening Crimea, which is the real prize that Putin absolutely cannot afford to lose, not with its strategic value in the Black Sea and access to trade. 

In order to have any chance of breaking out of the stalemate, Putin will have to call up a national mobilization -- and he can't afford another of those, not economically and more importantly not politically:

Three sources said Putin understood any dramatic new advances would require another nationwide mobilisation, which he didn't want, with one source, who knows the Russian president, saying his popularity dipped after the first mobilisation in September 2022.

The national call up spooked part of the population in Russia, triggering hundreds of thousands of draft age men to leave the country. Polls showed Putin’s popularity falling by several points.

The status quo isn't going to be sustainable either, not in the long run. Putin has probably run out the string there too, in terms of his standing not just with ordinary Russians, but more importantly with the oligarchs that run Russia. The mobilization itself sapped economic potential, and the mass flight of younger Russians made that more or less permanent. The oligarchs may have survived this long under Western sanctions, but they will want to re-engage economically at some point, sooner rather than later. Bleeding on the Western front for a few more square miles of turf won't look profitable to them or to those shanghaied into military service.

And even if they managed a conquest of Ukraine, the last two-plus years have made it clear that holding that territory will turn into a bloody mess for years, if not decades. The Ukrainians outside of the Donbas will not be digested, especially not after they have experienced the inhumane tactics of Russian power. It will touch off generations of partisan warfare that could easily spill into Russia proper, and that national mobilization will almost certainly be needed to deal with controlling that much hostile territory.

So what will a deal look like? The Ukrainians are not going to willingly part with the Donbas and Crimea, period, but certainly won't even discuss it without ironclad guarantees of security from NATO, the EU, and the US. Putin has to know this too; if he wanted a neutral Ukraine, he'd withdraw from the Donbas (but not Crimea) to set that up, and trust his Russian-ethnic proxies in the Donbas to exert soft power on his behalf. Will Putin agree to Western fortification against further Russian incursions, including arms sales and a Western-oriented foreign and economic policy in Kyiv? Putin probably intended the tactical-nuke drills to frighten NATO away from Ukraine, but all it likely did was remind NATO of why it exists in the first place. 

The Ukrainians will likely reject the notion, but Putin's not pitching Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin is pitching the feckless leadership of the West, which is busy trying to reward Hamas' terrorism and abominations with a sovereign state. Ireland, Spain, and Norway have already caved to terrorism and have aligned themselves against the only liberal democracy in that region. Germany and France claim they'll arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for fighting a war Hamas started. The US is even going wobbly, trying to hand the Palestinians a state as a reward for October 7 and demanding elections in Israel to get a more compliant government that will retreat from Hamas. 

Putin likely senses that the moral leadership of the West has largely been drained, and that defeatism has neutered it. China has almost certainly reached the same conclusion, hence its current "war games" surrounding Taiwan. Are they wrong?