Cautious Russia awaits details from US on Ukraine ceasefire plan

After Russian forces made gains in 2024, US President Donald Trump reversed US policy on the war, launching bilateral talks with Moscow and suspending military assistance to Ukraine, demanding that it take steps to end the conflict.

The United States agreed on Tuesday to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing after Kyiv said at talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal.

The Kremlin said it was carefully studying the results of the meeting and would await details from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested a reporter was getting “a little ahead” of himself by asking if Russia intended to tie a ceasefire proposal to the lifting of international sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.

“Rubio and Waltz said that they would pass on detailed information to us through various channels about the essence of the conversation that took place in Jeddah. First, we must receive this information,” Peskov said.

Rubio said the United States was hoping for a positive response, and that if the answer was “no” then it would tell Washington a lot about the Kremlin’s true intentions.

He said there would be contacts with Moscow on Wednesday, that Europe would have to be involved in any security guarantee for Ukraine, and that the sanctions Europe has imposed would also be on the table.

Asked whether Russia could accept the ceasefire unconditionally, Rubio said: “That’s what we want to know – whether they’re prepared to do it unconditionally.”

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed this week’s meeting in Saudi Arabia between U.S. and Ukrainian officials as constructive, and said a potential 30-day ceasefire with Russia could be used to draft a broader peace deal.

UKRAINE SET TO LOSE FOOTHOLD IN RUSSIA’S KURSK REGION

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West in six decades.

Ukrainian troops appeared on the point of losing their hard-won foothold inside Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday as Moscow claimed further advances there and military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv’s forces were withdrawing.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that he is ready to talk about an end to the war and Trump says he thinks Putin is serious, though other Western leaders disagree.

Trump said on Tuesday that he hoped Russia would agree to a ceasefire and that he would talk to Putin this week.

Reuters reported in November that Putin was ready to negotiate a deal with Trump, but would refuse to make major territorial concessions and would insist Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.

A senior Russian source told Reuters that Putin would find it hard to agree to the ceasefire idea without hashing out terms and getting some sort of guarantees.

“Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, told Reuters.

Without guarantees alongside a ceasefire, Russia’s position could swiftly become weaker and that Russia could then be blamed by the West for failing to end the war, they added.

“So yes, we are in favour of a truce with both hands, but we need at least framework guarantees and at least from the United States.”

Another senior Russian source said the ceasefire proposal looked, from Moscow’s perspective, to be a trap because Putin would find it hard to halt the war without concrete guarantees or pledges.

A third Russian source said the most important development was in fact that the United States had agreed to resume military aid and intelligence sharing, merely decorating that move with a ceasefire proposal.

RUSSIA WANTS ITS ADVANCES TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, said on Telegram that Russia’s advances in Ukraine must be taken into account.

“Any agreements – with all the understanding of the need for compromise – on our terms, not American. And this is not boasting, but understanding that real agreements are still being written there, at the front. Which they should understand in Washington, too,” he said.

Putin has repeatedly said a short-term truce is not the way to end the war.

“We don’t need a truce, we need a long-term peace secured by guarantees for the Russian Federation and its citizens,” he said in December. “It is a difficult question how to ensure these guarantees.”

In June, he set out his terms for peace: Ukraine must officially drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.

Russia controls just under a fifth of Ukraine, or about 113,000 sq km (44,000 sq miles), while Ukraine’s small foothold in western Russia is all but gone, according to open source maps of the war and Russian estimates.

Russia controls 75% of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and more than 99% of Luhansk region, according to Russian estimates.

Russia says all of those four regions are now legally part of Russia and will never be returned to Ukraine, which says they have been annexed illegally and that it will never recognise Russian sovereignty over them.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a Russia-friendly president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces then fighting Ukraine’s armed forces in the east.Apple MacBook Air M4, new iPad Air, and Mac Studio now available for purchase in India: Check price, offers, and more