This is John Matcher, a conversation with my colleague and a told Leaven of the Quincy Institute for

Responsible Statecraft about possible negotiations between Kief and Moscow to end, to cease fire the Ukraine war after 29 months.

And it all guides us to what might work.

It's legalistic and it's very careful and both sides might very well have

already acknowledged the possibility. An end of the Ukraine war. Here's Anatole Leaven. More of this later tonight.

The territory that they now hold.

I think that is absolutely clear.

However, there is one important point which I think has not been brought out sufficiently in the West, which is that everybody I talked to in Moscow, including the real hardliners, said that they do not actually expect Ukraine or the West or anyone else

legally to recognize Russia's annexations.

And that's, they know that the Ukrainians will never do that, the West will never do that, but importantly, they also know that the Russians, the Chinese, the South Africans, will not formally recognize annexations.

This is completely against their basic principles.

And so, you see, in a way, Ukraine doesn't actually have to concede these territories to Russia.

It just has to accept a ceasefire leaving these territories in Russian hands.

And then their legal status, you know, as in the case of Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of

Norman Cyprus, is endlessly deferred for future

negotiation. That, I think, is in the end what is going to happen in an eventual peace settlement that and by the

way Zelensky also himself proposed this for Crimea at the very start of the war.

No legal concession but future negotiations.