By Guy Faulconbridge, Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin
MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia supported a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that fighting could not be paused until a number of crucial conditions were worked out or clarified.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the sharpest confrontation for decades between Moscow and the West.
Putin’s heavily qualified support for the U.S. ceasefire proposal looked designed to signal goodwill to Washington and open the door to further talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.
But Putin said any agreement must address what Moscow sees as the root causes of the conflict, a major caveat that suggests any ceasefire will take longer than Trump wants.
“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin told reporters at the Kremlin. “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.”
Putin has said he wants Ukraine to drop its ambitions to join NATO, Russia to control the entirety of the four Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, and the size of the Ukrainian army to be limited.
He has also made clear he wants Western sanctions eased and a presidential election to be held in Ukraine, which Kyiv says is premature while martial law is in force.
Putin listed ceasefire-related issues that he said now needed clarifying and thanked Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war. Both Moscow and Washington now cast the conflict as a deadly proxy war with the potential to trigger World War Three.
Trump, who said he was willing to talk to Putin by phone, called the statement “very promising” and said he hoped Moscow would “do the right thing”.
Trump said Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, had held talks on Thursday with the Russians in Moscow on the U.S. proposal, which Kyiv has already agreed to.
The U.S. president said those discussions would show if Moscow was ready to make a deal.
“Now we’re going to see whether or not Russia is there, and if they’re not, it’ll be a very disappointing moment for the world,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he thought Putin was preparing to reject the proposal but was afraid to tell Trump.
“That’s why in Moscow they are imposing upon the idea of a ceasefire these conditions – so that nothing happens at all, or so that it cannot happen for as long as possible,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
TERRITORIAL QUESTIONS
The West and Ukraine describe Russia’s 2022 invasion as an imperial-style land grab, and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces, which 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.
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, cooperation in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Putin said the ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine did not 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.
Trump said his administration has been discussing what land Ukraine would keep or lose under any settlement, as well as the future of a large power plant.
He was most likely referring to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear plant. The two sides have accused each other of risking an accident at the plant with their actions.
Any delay in agreeing a ceasefire could give Russia more time to push the last Ukrainian forces out of its western Kursk region.
Russia in recent days has pressed a lightning offensive in Kursk against Ukrainian forces, which entered 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.
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow; additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Michael Perry and Kevin Liffey)
