The heads of five European intelligence agencies have cast serious doubt on the prospect of a peace deal in Ukraine this year, with one dismissing ongoing U.S.-brokered talks as “negotiation theatre” and others saying Russia is using the process to pursue sanctions relief and bilateral deals with Washington.
The five officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Russia did not want to end the war quickly — a assessment that puts European capitals at striking odds with the White House, which has said a deal is “reasonably close” and is pushing to clinch an agreement by June ahead of U.S. congressional mid-term elections in November.
“Russia is not seeking a peace agreement. They are seeking their strategic goals, and those have not changed,” one of the officials said, adding that Moscow’s objectives included the removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the transformation of Ukraine into a neutral buffer state.
Four of the five chiefs said Russia was using the talks — the latest round of which took place in Geneva this week — to press for sanctions relief and to secure business deals with the United States. Two said Moscow was actively trying to split the negotiations into two separate tracks: one focused on the war and another on bilateral arrangements with Washington.
Zelenskiy said his intelligence services had told him that U.S. and Russian negotiators were discussing bilateral cooperation deals worth as much as $12 trillion, proposed by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev. The European officials did not provide details on those discussions, though one said the offer was designed to appeal to Trump and to Russian oligarchs whose loyalty Putin needs to retain as Russia’s economy faces growing headwinds.
A second intelligence chief said the fundamental problem was that Russia neither wanted nor needed a quick peace, and that its economy was “not on the verge of collapse.” A third warned against the assumption that Ukraine ceding the Donetsk region would swiftly produce a settlement, predicting Russia would simply table further demands. “In the case of the Russians getting these concessions, I think that this is maybe the beginning of actual negotiations,” the official said.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held their third U.S.-mediated meeting of 2026 this week without any breakthrough on territory. Moscow is demanding that Kyiv withdraw from the roughly 20% of Donetsk it still controls — something Ukraine has refused to do.
The spy chiefs also raised concerns about the calibre of Western negotiators. The U.S. team is led by Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and long-time Trump associate, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. Neither are trained diplomats nor have specific expertise on Russia or Ukraine.
One official described the level of negotiating skill across the West, including on the European side, as “very limited.”
The White House pushed back on the assessments. Spokeswoman Anna Kelly said anonymous criticism did not help U.S. efforts to end the war. “President Trump and his team have done more than anyone to bring both sides together to stop the killing and deliver a peace deal,” she said.
Not all the intelligence chiefs were dismissive of pressure on Moscow. A third official said Russia faced “very high” financial risks in the second half of 2026, pointing to its limited access to capital markets, high borrowing costs and a sovereign wealth fund that has more than halved since the 2022 invasion. The central bank’s key interest rate currently stands at 15.5%.
(Reuters)
