JAW, JAW IS BETTER THAN WAR, WAR: Russia Finally ‘Ready’ for Ukraine Peace Talks.

Shoigu made the remarks at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China’s largest military diplomacy event, saying that Russia is also ready for talks on further “co-existence” with the West, but said Western countries needed to stop seeking the strategic defeat of his country.

The prospect of peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow have been raised multiple times since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Kremlin has specified a few conditions that are non-negotiable for Russia, including that Ukraine must accept the September 2022 annexation of four of its regions—Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—following referendums called by Putin that were deemed illegal by the international community.

Ukraine has said that any peace deal must invalidate the September 2022 annexations of its territory, and that the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin annexed in 2014, must once again be considered part of Ukraine.

Maybe there’s room for compromise now that it’s clear Russia isn’t going to conquer Ukraine and Ukraine isn’t going to win back everything Russia has taken since 2014.

But that’s a very slim maybe. Nationalists on both sides don’t want to compromise, and a “frozen conflict” that keeps Ukraine weak and unstable is much more in Putin’s interest than a formal peace.