Putin sets stringent terms for US ceasefire in Ukraine

Moscow — President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia supported a US proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that any truce would have to address the root causes of the conflict and that many crucial details needed to be sorted out.

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

Putin’s heavily qualified support for the US ceasefire proposal looked designed to signal goodwill to Washington and to open the door to further talks with President Donald Trump. But the sheer number of clarifications Putin sought and the conditions he suggested might need to be attached to reassure Moscow appeared to rule out a swift ceasefire.

“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin said at a news conference in the Kremlin after talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. “The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it.

“But we proceed from the fact that this cessation should be such that it would lead to long-term peace and would eliminate the original causes of this crisis.”

He went on to list a slew of issues he said needed clarifying and thanked Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war which Moscow and Washington now cast as a deadly proxy war that could have escalated into World War 3.

Trump, who said he was willing to talk to the Russian leader by phone, called Putin’s statement “very promising” and said he hoped Moscow would “do the right thing”.

Trump said Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, was engaged in serious talks with the Russians in Moscow about the US proposal which Kyiv has already agreed to.

Ukraine is likely to see Putin’s stance as an attempt to buy time while Russian troops squeeze the last Ukrainian troops out of western Russia and Moscow sticks to demands that Kyiv regards as seeking its own capitulation.

The West and Ukraine describe Russia’s 2022 invasion as a land grab and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces. Russian forces control nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and have been edging forward since mid-2024.

Putin portrays the conflict as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging the Nato military alliance and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.

‘Serious questions’

European powers have been deeply concerned that Trump could be turning his back on Europe for some sort of grand bargain with Putin that could include China, oil prices and co-operation in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Putin said Russian forces were moving forward along the entire front line and that the ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine did not seek to simply use it to regroup.

“How can we and how will we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will control [of the ceasefire] be organised?” Putin said. “These are all serious questions.”

“There are issues that we need to discuss. And I think we need to talk to our American colleagues as well.”

Putin said he might call Trump to discuss the issue.

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

Russia has pressed a lightning offensive in recent days in the western Russian region of Kursk after Ukrainian forces there smashed through the border last August in a bid to divert forces from eastern Ukraine, gain a bargaining chip and embarrass Putin.

The Russian leader wondered how a ceasefire would affect the situation in Kursk.

“If we stop hostilities for 30 days, what does that mean? That everyone who is there will leave without a fight?,” he said. “Should we let them out of there after they have committed a lot of crimes against civilians? Or will the Ukrainian leadership give us the order to lay down our arms? It is not clear.”

Ukraine now has a sliver of less than 200km² in Kursk, down from 1,300km2 at the peak of the incursion last summer, according to the Russian military.

Putin on Wednesday donned a camouflage uniform — extremely rare for the former KGB officer — to visit a command post in the Kursk region.

‘Welcome’

Beyond the immediate ceasefire idea, Russia has presented the US with a list of demands for a deal to end its war against Ukraine and reset relations with Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Asked about the report, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Washington knew Russia’s position. Before Putin spoke, Ushakov said that the US ceasefire proposal offered Russia “nothing”.

Putin said Russia would welcome back Western companies if they wanted to return, though he also said that markets had been taken over by domestic producers and that Moscow would not be creating any special conditions for Western companies.

“To those [companies] who want to return, we say: Welcome, welcome at any moment,” Putin said, using the English word welcome.

Putin added that if Moscow and Washington could agree on energy co-operation, then gas supplies for Europe could resume after Russia lost its primary position as the main supplier to Europe during the war.

Reuters