The New York Times piece on Budanov reads like a Rorschach test for everyone who still thinks this war ends with a handshake.
The Waiting Room Doctrine
You have the head of the Presidential Office, a man moscovia wants dead, openly saying he would fly to Moscow if the conditions were acceptable. Half of Western commentary will process that as softness. The other half will process it as treason. Both are wrong.
Budanov is doing what intelligence officers do. He keeps the channel open while making sure the other side pays for every meter. The photo in his waiting room is not decoration. Ukrainian special forces storming a GRU position at the Vovchansk cement plant in 2024, with Kostyukov's people dying inside, is the entire doctrine in one frame.
You talk, you negotiate, you exchange prisoners. And you still burn their command structure when the opportunity presents itself.
The Prigozhin Backchannel
The detail about Prigozhin deserves more attention. Budanov was in contact with the Wagner founder almost until the mutiny. That tells you more about moscovia's internal fragility than any think tank report.
The Kremlin's own mercenary boss was maintaining a backchannel with Ukrainian intelligence while his convicts were being ground into paste in Bakhmut. The empire has many different factions and interests. A collection of armed factions held together by fear and money, and Kyiv has understood that from day one.
The Trap Disguised as a Gesture
Now look at what the Russians actually offered:
- A flight to Moscow
- A possible meeting with Putin
- The implicit threat of arrest or worse
- A unilateral demand
The trap is disguised as a gesture. Budanov is on their wanted list for running GUR operations that killed their officers and destroyed their logistics. The invitation was either a provocation or a test of desperation. Either way, it went nowhere, and the talks stalled. The correct outcome.
Settlement Does Not Mean Surrender
The Carnegie memo framing him as leader of the settlement faction is useful only if you understand what settlement means in Ukrainian terms. It does not mean handing Donbas to moscovia. Budanov explicitly advised Zelenskyy against any compromise that would let Russia claim control over territory its army failed to take. This line is the boundary.
You do not gift Moscow what it could not win on the battlefield. You negotiate mechanisms for postwar governance, not surrender terms. The ideas floated in Abu Dhabi, private military companies, a Trump peace council, joint civil administrations, are not concessions. They are attempts to structure the endgame so that moscovia cannot declare victory. A direct refusal to give in. The slow, bureaucratic work denies the aggressor the narrative it needs to sell the war back home as a win.
The Western Reaction Problem
The same outlets that spent three years calling every Ukrainian negotiation position unrealistic are now breathlessly reporting that talks might resume by late September, with Witkoff and Kushner flying to Kyiv. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is telling Trump that European leaders are the party of war, that Russian forces are advancing, that Kostyantynivka is under control.
The phone call before the Ankara NATO summit was purely for show. Putin congratulated Trump on July Fourth, then fed him the standard line about European obstruction. The goal is to split Washington from Brussels before the summit even starts. The FT source from Moscow said it plainly. Putin has no intention of ending the war. The best Russian option is for the Americans to hand them Ukraine. There are no real concessions on the table.
The Kremlin is using Western media to project intransigence, to make any Ukrainian or Western pressure seem pointless. The operation is designed to undermine the peace process. Budanov says the war cannot be eternal. Correct. But it also cannot end on moscovian terms.
The only path to a real settlement runs through continued Ukrainian military pressure, expanded long-range strikes, and Western support that treats the conflict as a European security crisis. The negotiations will matter when the battlefield forces moscovia to accept that its imperial project is finished. Until then, every channel stays open, and every Russian command post stays a target.