What will it take to stop fighting in Ukraine? Freezing frontlines may end war – at what price?
For the fighting to stop in Ukraine, President Valdimir Putin has repeatedly said the Russians need to be in control of four oblasts, or regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
The Russians already captured Crimea in 2014 but the issue is that the Russians are not currently in control of all these oblasts.
There are parts of Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson that are still in Ukrainian possession and, to counter this, the Ukrainians have captured a small part of Kursk oblast in Russia.
It is possible that the Ukrainians took this area as a future bargaining chip in any negotiations although the Ukrainians claim they did it to push Russian artillery back from the city of Sumy.
The current negotiations could focus on freezing the current lines.
President Putin would not be happy as he hasn't captured all the territory he has stated he wants.
However, he would need to balance this against the realities facing his armed forces as they have lost huge numbers of troops and armoured vehicles.
The Russian navy in the Black Sea has been decimated, plus Russia's energy infrastructure, especially oil refineries, has been under constant attack by waves of Ukrainian long-range drones.
Some European countries argue that freezing the war now would appease Mr Putin and that a bully wins in his land grab – he would have something he didn't have before.
The US Trump administration argues that the territory is already lost and the Ukrainians aren't looking like retrieving it in the near future.
So they need to accept the realities on the ground, stop the fighting and end the suffering and death.
The negotiations between Ukraine, Russia and the US are likely to focus on what it will take for the Russians to stop attacking and accept the current frontlines.
They could look at the return of parts of Kursk oblast to Russia in return for Russia giving up on capturing the remaining oblasts it claims.
From the Ukrainian perspective, they would argue that they will never give up on their territory that is lost.
A peace deal now would have to accept that they are unlikely to be able to recover it in the near future so the conflict would be frozen in the same way as the Korean war has been frozen for more than 70 years.
In other words, both sides would accept the current frontlines. The war would not be fully over but the fighting would be stopped.
Some would argue this is a betrayal of the Ukrainians but the reality is they are having massive military recruitment issues and their population, while defiant, are also exhausted from the conflict.
One important factor is also that the US has indicated it will still supply weapons in return for raw materials from Ukraine.
Previously, the biggest concern was that the US under the Trump administration would stop these critical armaments supplies.
Other negotiation topics would likely include where any European peacekeeping forces would fit into this.
Another could be how large the deconfliction zone is between the frontlines.
Finally, the potential lifting of sanctions on Russia would be part of this and the unfreezing of frozen overseas Russian assets.
The Ukrainians are likely to want reparations from the Russians for the huge damage caused to their infrastructure but Moscow is unlikely to agree to this apart from areas they have captured.
The prospect that the Russian appetite for further invasions is unknown but, in Ukraine, at least the killing would stop.
It is possible the Russian forces are so depleted that it would take years to reconstitute them to their previous strength anyway.
The talks could pave the way for a ceasefire which is highly unsatisfactory, especially for the Ukrainians, but could be worth it for the fighting to end.
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