MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs said bond pricing inferred that markets believed there was 70% probability of a Ukraine peace deal, up sharply from before the November election of U.S. President Donald Trump.
“Our modeling suggests that current market pricing for a peace deal has risen from below 50% prior to US elections to around 70% at present,” Goldman Sachs said in research note to clients.
It added, however, that this was slightly lower than a peak of 76% in February.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” of the three-year conflict in Ukraine – which his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
President Vladimir Putin said last month that Russia supported a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that fighting could not be paused until a number of crucial conditions were worked out or clarified.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said that Putin’s conditions for a ceasefire are unrealistic and has accused the Russian leader of wanting to continue the war.
Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014, and most but not all of four other regions which Moscow now claims are part of Russia – a claim not recognised by most countries.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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