Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 13 expressed appreciation for a U.S.-backed cease-fire in Ukraine but stopped short of agreeing to the framework.
Putin said that any cease-fire would have to deal with the root causes of the conflict and that many details needed to be sorted out before Moscow would agree to halt its invasion.
“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin told reporters at a Kremlin news conference. “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.”
In the past, Putin has demanded that Ukraine be permanently barred from joining NATO and that no foreign power ever station troops on Ukrainian soil.
Those lofty goals are short of Putin’s original stated objectives for the invasion, which included the complete demilitarization of Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 12 that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the proposal for a 30-day cease-fire to end what Trump called the “bloodbath” in Ukraine.
Beyond the immediate cease-fire idea, Russia has presented the United States with a list of demands for a deal to end its war against Ukraine and reset relations with Washington.
Putin added that if Moscow and Washington could agree on energy cooperation, then gas supplies for Europe could resume, following Russia’s loss of its primary position as the main supplier to Europe during the war.
He also added that Russia would welcome back Western companies if they wanted to return, but he said that markets had been taken over by domestic producers and that Moscow would not be creating any special conditions for Western companies.
Ukraine has expressed its own concerns that Russia would use a truce to regroup and rearm.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chided Russia on the Telegram messaging app on March 13 for what he said was its slow response to the cease-fire proposal, accusing Moscow of trying to delay any peace deal. He said that Ukraine is “determined to move quickly toward peace” and that he hoped that U.S. pressure would compel Russia to stop fighting.
Zelenskyy has already agreed to the cease-fire framework, following a days-long pause in U.S. assistance to the embattled country.
The United States agreed on March 11 to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said during talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a cease-fire proposal.
In the time since Zelenskyy accepted Trump’s proposal, Russia has stepped up its attacks against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region.
Russia claims that its troops have driven the Ukrainian army out of a key town in Kursk, where Moscow has been trying for seven months to dislodge Ukrainian troops.
Although Ukrainian forces occupied only a small part of Kursk, the region is of critical importance, as control of it will dictate whether or not Kyiv has a bargaining chip with which to compel Moscow to return some of Ukraine’s occupied territories.
Putin added that he supports “the idea of ending this conflict by peaceful means” and would speak further with U.S. negotiators about the issue.
“The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it,” he said. “But there are issues that we need to discuss. And I think we need to talk to our American colleagues as well.”
Putin’s remarks come just hours after Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, landed in Moscow to take part in negotiations about a potential cease-fire in Ukraine.
Putin’s top foreign policy aide told Russian state media earlier in the day that Washington’s proposed 30-day cease-fire would simply give Kyiv’s forces a much-needed rest and time to regroup.
Trump has made ending the war in Ukraine a key policy objective, at one time promising on the campaign trail to end the war on “day one” of his presidency.
Trump responded later on March 13, saying that Putin’s remarks were a promising start but not enough, and he suggested that he could meet with Putin to get the deal done.
“I’d love to meet with him and talk to him, but we have to get it over with fast,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“Hopefully, they’ll do the right thing.”
Earlier in the week, Trump suggested that he could unleash more severe economic sanctions against Moscow if it would not cooperate on a cease-fire deal.
“I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia,” Trump said. “I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace. In a financial sense, yes, we could do things that would be very bad for Russia, that would be devastating for Russia.”
