Putin agrees in principle with proposal for Ukraine ceasefire and says
more discussions are needed
[March 14, 2025]
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he
agrees in principle with a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in
Ukraine, but he emphasized that the terms are yet to be worked out and
added that any truce should pave the way to lasting peace.
“The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it," Putin told a
news conference in Moscow. “But there are issues that we need to
discuss, and I think that we need to talk about it with our American
colleagues and partners and, perhaps, have a call with President Trump
and discuss it with him."
President Donald Trump said there have been “good signals” coming out of
Russia and offered guarded optimism about Putin’s statement. He
reiterated that he's ready to speak with Putin and underscored that it
was time to end the war.
Putin "put out a very promising statement, but it wasn’t complete,”
Trump said Thursday at a start of a meeting at the White House with NATO
Secretary General Mark Rutte. “Now we’re going to see whether or not
Russia’s there. And if they’re not, it’ll be a very disappointing moment
for the world.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin is “essentially
preparing to reject” the ceasefire.
Putin “is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to
continue this war, that he wants to kill Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said in
his nightly address to the nation. “That is why, in Moscow, they are
surrounding the idea of a ceasefire with such preconditions that nothing
will come of it — or at least, it will be delayed as long as possible.”
The Russian president, he added, “often acts this way. He doesn’t say
‘no’ outright but ensures that everything drags on and that normal
solutions become impossible.”
Putin, who launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three
years ago, noted the need to control possible breaches of the truce and
signaled that Russia would seek guarantees that Ukraine would not use
the break in hostilities to rearm and continue mobilization.
“We agree with the proposals to halt the fighting, but we proceed from
the assumption that the ceasefire should lead to lasting peace and
remove the root causes of the crisis,” Putin said.
The Russian leader made the remarks just hours after the arrival of
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow for talks on the
ceasefire, which Ukraine has accepted. A Kremlin adviser said Putin
planned to meet with Witkoff later Thursday.
The diplomatic effort coincided with a Russian claim that its troops
have driven the Ukrainian army out of a key town in Russia’s Kursk
border region, where Moscow has been trying for seven months to dislodge
Ukrainian troops from their foothold.
Russia questions details of truce offer
Putin said it appeared that the U.S. persuaded Ukraine to accept a
ceasefire and that Ukraine is interested because of the battlefield
situation, particularly in Kursk.
Referring to the Ukrainian troops in Kursk, he questioned what will
happen to them if the ceasefire takes hold: “Will all those who are
there come out without a fight? Or will the Ukrainian leadership order
them to lay down arms and surrender?"
Putin thanked Trump “for paying so much attention to the settlement in
Ukraine.”
He also thanked the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa for
their “noble mission to end the fighting,” a statement that suggested
those countries could be involved in a ceasefire deal. Russia has said
it will not accept peacekeepers from any NATO members to monitor a
prospective truce.
Putin's seemingly friendly tone toward the White House reflected the
astonishing shift in U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine since Trump
returned to office in January.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint news
conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko following
their talks at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia, Thursday,
March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Under the administration of former President Joe Biden, the United
States was Ukraine's staunchest and most powerful ally and a force
for isolating the Kremlin. But Trump's election threw that policy
into reverse.
Trump briefly cut off critical military aid and intelligence sharing
in an apparent effort to push Kyiv to enter talks to end the war,
and Zelenskyy had a testy meeting at the White House on Feb. 28 in
which Trump questioned whether Ukraine wanted to halt the war.
The Trump administration has also repeatedly embraced Kremlin
positions on the conflict, including indicating that Ukraine's hopes
of joining NATO are unlikely to be realized and that it probably
will not get back the land that Russia’s army occupies, which
amounts to nearly 20% of the country.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that it recaptured the town of
Sudzha, a Ukrainian operations hub in Kursk, came hours after Putin
visited his commanders in the Kursk region. The claim could not be
independently verified. Ukrainian officials made no immediate
comment.
Administration repeats threat of new sanctions
As Trump seeks a diplomatic end to the war, he has made veiled
threats to hit Russia with new sanctions if it does not engage with
peace efforts.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC Thursday that Trump
is “willing to apply maximum pressure on both sides,” including
sanctions that reach the highest scale on Russia.
The U.S. still has about $3.85 billion in congressionally authorized
funding for future arms shipments to Ukraine, but the Trump
administration has shown no interest so far in using that authority
to send additional weapons as it awaits the outcome of peace
overtures.
By signaling its openness to a ceasefire at a time when the Russian
military has the upper hand in the war, Ukraine has presented the
Kremlin with a dilemma — whether to accept a truce and abandon hopes
of making new gains, or reject the offer and risk derailing a
cautious rapprochement with Washington.
The Ukrainian army’s foothold inside Russia has been under intense
pressure for months from the renewed effort by Russian forces,
backed by North Korean troops. Ukraine's daring incursion last
August led to the first occupation of Russian soil by foreign troops
since World War II and embarrassed the Kremlin.
Ukraine launched the raid in a bid to counter the unceasingly grim
news from the front line, as well as to draw Russian troops away
from the battlefield inside Ukraine and to gain a bargaining chip in
any peace talks. But the incursion did not significantly change the
dynamic of the war.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank,
assessed late Wednesday that Russian forces were in control of
Sudzha, a town close to the border that previously was home to about
5,000 people.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said
Russian aircraft conducted so many strikes on Kursk that Sudzha had
been almost completely destroyed. He did not comment on whether
Ukraine still controlled the settlement but said his country was
“maneuvering (troops) to more advantageous lines.”
___
Associated Press Writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to
this report.
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