Putin rejects immediate ceasefire in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin said any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine’s interests as Donald Trump reveals plans to talk to the Russian leader soon.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference following a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart at the Kremlin in Moscow on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia wouldn’t agree to an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine, calling for more discussion on a permanent end to the war as Moscow’s army made rapid gains toward expelling Ukraine’s forces from its Kursk region.

Any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine’s interests, he said, adding that Russia wanted a truce that led “to a lasting peace and the elimination of the root causes” of the war, which he described as a crisis.

Putin’s comments were the first official response from Moscow to a US-backed proposal agreed by Ukraine this week to pause the war, now in its fourth year. They came as President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was headed to Moscow to discuss the cease-fire proposal, according to two US officials.

The cease-fire offer, negotiated in Saudi Arabia this week, put pressure on the Russian president to signal a willingness to work toward peace. On Thursday, Putin stressed that Russia was open to a cease-fire, and wanted the war to end, But he also raised a litany of complex issues that he said needed to be resolved before such a move could be accepted by Moscow.

“The idea itself is good, and we of course support it, but there are questions we have to discuss,” Putin said Thursday.

Putin said it wasn’t clear how such a cease-fire would be enforced and whether it would give Ukraine the chance to shore up its forces.

Iryna Petrochenko , 50, looks out from damaged apartment after a Russian missile attack happened killing a 47-year-old woman and wounding nine others on March 12 in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. Picture: Getty Images

“Who will give orders to stop fighting? What is the price of those orders? Who will determine where and by whom they were violated?” he said, adding he intended to discuss such questions with Trump.

Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday (local time) he was pressing for Russia to agree to a cease-fire. He said he plans to speak with Putin soon.

“I’d love to meet with him and talk to him, but we have to get it over with fast,” Trump said, sitting next to Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Asked about the ongoing talks with Russia, Trump said they were “very serious” and added: “Hopefully they’ll do the right thing.”

“A lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed. Now we’re going to see if Russia is there and, if not, it will be a very disappointing moment for the world,” he said.

The cease-fire offer, negotiated by the US and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia this week, put pressure on the Russian president to signal a willingness to work toward peace. On Thursday, Putin thanked Trump for bringing attention to the cease-fire in Ukraine, but he also raised a litany of complex issues that he said needed to be resolved before the fighting could end.

Putin said it wasn’t clear how such a cease-fire would be enforced and whether it would give Ukraine the chance to shore up its forces. “Who will give orders to stop fighting? What is the price of those orders? Who will determine where and by whom they were violated?” he said, adding he intended to discuss such questions with Trump.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called Putin’s response “highly predictable” and “manipulative words” aimed at dragging out the process by setting unworkable preconditions. “Of course, Putin is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to continue this war and keep killing Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “Putin does this often -- he doesn’t say ‘no’ outright, but he drags things out and makes reasonable solutions impossible.”

Russia in the past has repeatedly ruled out a temporary cease-fire and voiced skepticism about any peace talks, insisting that a lasting agreement would take time.

Many of the “root causes” cited by Putin were set out in a draft treaty drawn up by Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in April 2022, weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.

Russia justified its invasion that year as a defense against NATO expansion, and that document envisions a postwar Ukraine that is a disarmed and permanently neutral state unaligned with any military blocs.

Moscow insists on keeping at a minimum the 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory it already controls, an area equivalent to the state of Virginia in size. It wants to reverse policies that have sidelined Russian cultural influence in Ukraine and preclude the country’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

With its army advancing on the battlefield and retaking territory Ukraine had hoped to use as a bargaining chip, Russia has little incentive to stop the fighting.

“Putin doesn’t feel any pressure,” said Konstantin Sonin, a Russia expert who teaches at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “Trump has no leverage over him, and he thinks he’s winning.”

Russia’s military said Thursday that it had retaken Sudzha, the biggest town held by Ukraine in the Kursk region, after recapturing a string of villages in recent days. Ukraine didn’t respond to a request for comment. Kyiv has been using Sudzha as a logistical hub to resupply troops in the area.Putin visited a command post in Kursk on Wednesday, his first time in the region since Ukraine’s incursion there, and addressed top army officials dressed in military fatigues. On Thursday, he said the situation in Kursk was fully under Russia’s control and Ukraine was on the verge of being ousted from Russian territory.

“Obviously Ukraine would like a temporary cease-fire now. And we’re for it,” he said.

Destruction in the town of Sudzha in the Kursk region. Picture: Russian Defence Ministry / AFP

The rapid retreat of Ukraine’s forces in Kursk followed a pause in U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine in the wake of an Oval Office confrontation between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump. Washington said it would restart military aid after Ukraine agreed to the terms of a cease-fire.

The loss of Ukraine’s toehold in Kursk, where at one point it had captured an area roughly the size of Los Angeles, would mark a significant defeat for Kyiv. Russia has thrown enormous resources into the campaign to recapture its territory, deploying North Korean troops and staging daring operations. One unit crawled through a disused section of a natural-gas pipeline this week to outflank Ukrainian troops defending Sudzha, with several dying of methane poisoning, according to pro-Kremlin war bloggers.

Critics of Kyiv’s Kursk operation, including some in Ukraine, said the incursion into Russia had drained resources and manpower from strained parts of the Ukrainian front line. Zelensky has argued that control of Russian territory would provide leverage in any future negotiations to end the war.

On Wednesday, Oleksandr Syrskiy, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, said his highest priority was to safeguard the lives of Ukrainian troops.

“To do this, the units of the Defense Forces, if necessary, maneuver to more favorable positions,” he said in a post on social media. He added that Sudzha has been almost completely destroyed by fighting.

The Wall Street Journal