Report: US Continues Secret Negotiations With Russia

Back-channel discussions are continuing between several former U.S. senior national security officials and high-ranking officials from the Kremlin concerning Ukraine, according to a former U.S. official involved in the talks, according to a new report.

The official, speaking to The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity, considering the nature of the discussions, the meetings have been taking place at least twice monthly, usually online.

However, the source confirmed "visiting Moscow at least every three months."

Such discussions are known among diplomats as "Track Two diplomacy," which describes unofficial engagements that involve private citizens that are not in government.

However, in April, the talks shifted to "Track 1.5 diplomacy," which means current officials are involved in one end of the talks.

At that time, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov met in New York with Richard Haass, a former diplomat and the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Russia expert Thomas Graham, both former White House and State Department officials who are Council on Foreign Relations fellows, reports NBC News.

"There is an eminent need for track 1.5 diplomacy when the world gets closed off as it has now," the former official told The Moscow Times.

Track 1.5 diplomacy is described as allowing both sides to know where each other's "red lines" are while mitigating potential conflict, and serves as a link between track 1 diplomacy, or official government negotiations, and track 2 diplomacy, describing expert dialogues that are unofficial.

According to the NBC News report, quoting two sources familiar with the talks, the discussions are taking place with the Biden administration's knowledge, but not its direction.

And after the report in The Moscow Times, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge tweeted that "the United States has not requested official or former officials to open a back channel, and is not seeking such a channel. Nor are we passing any messages through others. When we say nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, we mean it."

But without authorization, there are questions about whether the talks could bring up accusations of violations of the 18th century Logan Act, which according to congressional records makes it illegal for private citizens "to engage in unauthorized diplomacy with foreign countries with the intent to "influence the measures or conduct of a foreign government" or to "defeat the measures of the United States."

Meanwhile, The Moscow Times' source commented that "we were given some access to the Kremlin's thinking, though not as much as we would have liked."

However, he said that Russia doesn't "know how to define victory or defeat. Some of the elites to whom we spoke had never wanted the war in the first place, even saying it had been a complete mistake."

The former official added "We made clear that the U.S. was prepared to work constructively with Russian national security concerns," and said that the White House's current tactic of isolating Russia internationally to bring the war to an end may not be the right approach.

"An attempt to isolate and cripple Russia to the point of humiliation or collapse would make negotiating almost impossible," he said. "We are already seeing this in the reticence from Moscow officials," he said.

The former official said that the talks are at somewhat of an impasse, but the problem is less with the Russian officials than it is with President Vladimir Putin.

"The U.S. administration has made at least one attempt to speak with the Kremlin but Putin himself refused," the source said, adding that since that is happening, Washington should "begin reaching out to the anti-war Russian elite and begin making progress with them," as "ousting Putin would not be impossible" if the elite agree.