From Berlin to Brussels, the assessment is the same: Russia is not negotiating to end the Russian-Ukrainian war. It is negotiating to survive it on its own terms.
A chancellor’s bleak forecast
Germany has been Ukraine’s largest military backer in Europe for over a year, so when its chancellor speaks about the war’s prospects, it carries weight. Speaking to the newspapers of the Neue Berliner Redaktionsgesellschaft and Rheinpfalz, as Spiegel reported, Friedrich Merz offered no comfort.
“This war will, in my assessment, only end when one of the two sides is exhausted, either militarily or economically,” he said.
On Putin specifically, Merz was equally direct: “Reason and humanitarian arguments will not convince Putin. That is the bitter truth.” He added that it is therefore Europe’s goal to ensure that the Russian state can no longer wage the war militarily or finance it economically.
Merz also argued that Russia’s ruling circle structurally cannot afford peace. “The Russian power clique cannot do without war for the foreseeable future. It must keep the war machine running because it has no plan for what to do with the hundreds of thousands of severely traumatized soldiers returning from the front.”
He ruled out any normalisation of relations with Putin, calling it “almost impossible,” and borrowed a line from the 19th-century French-American historian Astolphe de Custine, who wrote after travelling through Russia that the country showed “the deepest barbarism alongside the highest civilisation.” Merz drew a direct line to the present: “We are currently experiencing this country in a state of the deepest barbarism. That will not change in the foreseeable future, and we must come to terms with it.”
Five European spy chiefs call Geneva a performance
Merz’s assessment did not emerge in isolation. Reuters spoke to the heads of five European intelligence agencies in recent days, all on condition of anonymity. Their collective read is the same: Russia is not trying to end the war. It is using the talks for something else entirely.
Four of the five told Reuters that Moscow is treating the Geneva process primarily as leverage to push for sanctions relief and to open the door to bilateral business deals with Washington. One was more direct, calling what is happening in Geneva not a negotiation at all, but “negotiation theatre.”
“Russia is not seeking a peace agreement. They are seeking their strategic goals, and those have not changed,” one intelligence chief told the publication. Those goals, the official said, include the removal of Zelenskyy and turning Ukraine into a neutral buffer between Russia and the West.
The financial stakes on the table are staggering. Zelenskyy has said his intelligence services informed him that US and Russian negotiators have been discussing bilateral cooperation deals worth up to $12 trillion, proposed by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Dmitriev responded publicly, posting on X: “The portfolio of potential US-Russia projects is over $14 trillion,” while calling the $12 trillion figure “fake news.” As the Kyiv Independent reported, the Kremlin has not denied the proposal’s existence — spokesman Dmitry Peskov described potential cooperation as a “natural extension” of shared economic interests.
According to one of the intelligence chiefs who spoke to Reuters, the offer is calibrated to appeal to both Trump and to Russian oligarchs who have not profited from the war due to sanctions but whose loyalty Putin needs as his economy faces growing pressure. Russia’s central bank rate stands at 15.5%, its rainy-day fund has more than halved since the 2022 invasion, and growth last year was just one percent. One intelligence chief noted Russia faces “very high” financial risks in the second half of 2026. But another cautioned against reading this as an urgency for peace: Russia, the official said, is a “resilient society” that can endure hardship.
The White House rejected all of it. Spokeswoman Anna Kelly said anonymous critics had done nothing to end the war, and that “President Trump and his team have done more than anyone to bring both sides together.”
What actually happened in Geneva
The third round of trilateral talks between Ukraine, the United States and Russia wrapped up on February 18 without progress on any of the core issues. According to Axios, the political track went “stuck,” with sources pointing to positions presented by the Russian side. Zelenskyy, visibly frustrated, addressed it directly on X: “I don’t need historical shit to end this war and move to diplomacy. Because it’s just a delay tactic.”
Medinsky called the talks “difficult but businesslike” and said a new round would follow soon. Zelenskyy said the military track had made some progress, but that sensitive political issues and a possible leaders’ summit had not been adequately addressed.
How Russian state media told a different story
While European capitals were drawing bleak conclusions, RT, TASS, RIA Novosti and Sputnik were projecting something closer to optimism. Medinsky’s “difficult but businesslike” line became the defining headline across all four outlets. TASS reported that a new round would take place soon. RIA Novosti was already suggesting Geneva would be the venue again.
The framing was consistent across all of them: Russia as a principled negotiator holding firm on legitimate demands, Ukraine as the party unwilling to accept the realities on the ground. RT framed Ukraine’s refusal to withdraw from Donbas as the central obstacle. RIA Novosti described Kyiv as being “in a rage” over what happened inside the room.
None of these outlets reported the intelligence assessment that Moscow is using the talks to push for sanctions relief. None mentioned the $12-14 trillion bilateral deal discussion. None referenced the European spy chiefs calling the entire process theatre. And none quoted Zelenskyy’s accusation that Russia was filling negotiating sessions with historical monologues instead of concrete proposals.
- https://tass.com/politics/2089123
- https://ria.ru/20260219/zheneva-2075506174.html
- https://www.rt.com/news/632638-us-russia-ukraine-talks-geneva/
- https://ria.ru/20260218/peregovory-2075106539.html
The campaign that ran before the talks began
The propaganda effort around Geneva did not begin when delegations landed in Switzerland. As Insight News Media investigated ahead of the talks, Russia launched a coordinated information operation timed directly to the diplomatic calendar, flooding the European information space with narratives designed to weaken Ukraine’s position before negotiations even started.
The operation ran on three recurring themes: Ukraine as ungrateful toward the West, Ukraine as a failed and corrupt state, and Ukrainian military actions as terrorism — the last of which deliberately strips away the context that these strikes occur within a defensive war against a full-scale Russian invasion.
This was not improvised. Russia’s 2026 federal budget included increased financing for state propaganda, pointing to a deliberate strategic shift toward the information space in preparation for diplomatic engagements. The goal was straightforward: make sure the argument was already lost in European public opinion before any Ukrainian diplomat walked through the door.
What Geneva really tells us
Taken together, the picture from Geneva is not of a stalled peace process slowly inching forward. It is a deliberate strategy. Russia is sustaining the appearance of diplomacy while using the format to pursue sanctions relief, cultivate bilateral ties with Washington, and buy time on the battlefield. European intelligence has said so privately. Merz has said it publicly. And a coordinated information operation was already flooding the European information space before the first session began.
The question is not whether a deal is close. Five of Europe’s top intelligence chiefs say it is not. The question is who benefits from the performance — and for how long the audience keeps watching.
