Russia hopes to weaken NATO through peace talks with Ukraine -. the telegraph. Putin is expected to demand that the alliance reduce its presence to 1997 levels. The Kremlin's foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushkov, said that Europe should be included in the talks between Russian, Ukrainian and American officials, as the continent will play a decisive role in reaching an agreement. However, diplomatic sources told The Telegraph that Russia's motivation for including European countries is to use the next round of negotiations to extract concessions on NATO expansion, which Vladimir Putin calls the "root cause" of the war. The Kremlin has previously signaled that the Russian president can compromise on other issues if his core demands are met, which essentially amounts to stripping Ukraine of its sovereignty and forcing NATO to curtail its eastward expansion. It is likely that Putin will demand that NATO's presence in Europe be reduced to the level it was in 1997, when the former Eastern Bloc countries began joining the alliance. This means the withdrawal of NATO troops from Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Finland, which joined the alliance in 2023. All five countries border Russia.