By Guy Faulconbridge and Dmitry Antonov
MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was awaiting details from Washington about a proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine before responding, while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hoped a deal would be struck within days.
As Moscow considered the plan, President Vladimir Putinvisited Russia’s Kursk region for the first time since Ukrainian troops captured part of it last year, Russian media reported.
Kyiv’s forces have been on the verge of losing that foothold, which Ukraine hoped to use as leverage in any peace talks with Moscow. With Putin’s visit highlighting Russian claims of success in Kursk, Valery Gerasimov, head of the Russian General Staff, told the Kremlin leader that Ukrainian troops were surrounded, according to the reports.
But Ukraine’s top army commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Facebook that fighting continued on the outskirts of Sudzha town in Kursk and Kyiv’s troops will continue operating there “as long as appropriate and necessary.”
The U.S. on Tuesday agreed 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 that meeting and awaited details from Rubio and White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Later on Wednesday, the White House said Waltz had spoken with his Russian counterpart.
Speaking to reporters when his plane refueled in Ireland, Rubio said on Wednesday: “Here’s what we’d like the world to look like in a few days: Neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets, nothing … and the talking starts.”
In Washington, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had received “positive messages” about the potential for a truce in the three-year-old conflict, without giving details.
After Russian forces made gains in Ukraine in 2024, Trump reversed U.S. policy on the war, launching bilateral talks with Moscow and suspending military assistance to Ukraine, demanding that it take steps to end the conflict.
“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,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry 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 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.
After a meeting of five European defence ministers, British defence minister John Healey on Wednesday told reporters that work was accelerating on a “coalition of the willing from Europe and beyond” to support Ukraine. French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said about 15 countries had expressed interest.
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 Zelenskiy 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.
During Putin’s visit, Gerasimov told him Kyiv’s plan in Kursk had failed and Russian forces had regained 1,100 square kilometers (425 square miles) of territory. Putin called for Kyiv’s troops in Kursk to be completely defeated.
Russian media group Agentstvo, which analysed Ukrainian open-source maps, earlier said that Ukraine controlled just 150 square kilometres in Kursk. A Ukrainian source said last year it had controlled 1,376 square kilometres of Kursk.
Putin has repeatedly said he is ready to talk about an end to the war and Trump says he thinks Putin is serious, though other Western leaders disagree.
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.
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 in any deal.
“Real agreements are still being written there, at the front. Which they should understand in Washington, too,” he said.
In June, Putin 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, which holds just under a fifth of Ukraine.
Ukraine says the regions 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.
(Additional reporting by Reuters in Moscow, Daphne Psaledakis in Shannon, Ireland, Doina Chiacu and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Cynthia Osterman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Kevin Liffey, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis)
