By Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military fatigues, ordered the swift defeat of Ukrainian forces in western Russia, a signal to the United States that Moscow holds the military initiative as they prepare to discuss a ceasefire on Thursday.
Russia’s advances along the front in recent months and U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to strike a peace deal to end the three-year-old conflict in Ukraine have raised fears that Kyiv, which was backed by the West, could lose the war.
Trump’s Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Thursday to meet Putin. Russian officials said U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had provided details on the ceasefire idea on Wednesday and Russia was ready to discuss it.
Trump had said in the White House on Wednesday that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine said it would support.
Just hours after Trump spoke, the Kremlin published footage of Putin dressed in a green camouflage uniform visiting the Kursk region of western Russia where Ukraine is set to lose its foothold after a lightning offensive by Russian forces.
“Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible timeframe, is to decisively defeat the enemy entrenched in the Kursk region,” said Putin, a former KGB officer who very rarely wears military uniform.
“And of course, we need to think about creating a security zone along the state border,” said Putin. He did not mention the ceasefire idea.
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.
In an attempt to divert Russian forces from eastern Ukraine, gain a bargaining chip and embarrass Putin, Ukraine smashed across the border into the Kursk region in August, the biggest attack on Russian territory since the Nazi invasion of 1941.
Ukraine now has a sliver of less than 200 square km (77 square miles) in Kursk, down from 1,300 square km (500 square miles) at the peak of the incursion last summer, according to the Russian military.
CEASEFIRE?
Putin is due on Thursday to hold talks in Moscow with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and then give a joint news conference, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The United States agreed on Tuesday to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said at talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal.
“It’s up to Russia now,” Trump said on Wednesday, saying that he hoped the “bloodbath” of the war would end. “And if we can get Russia to stop, then we have a full ceasefire. And I think it’ll never go back to war.”
Two senior Russian sources told Reuters that Putin would seek to carve out assurances and guarantees before agreeing to any ceasefire. Another senior Moscow source said that Putin would agree to the truce but seek to add his own terms on what should happen after the ceasefire.
Beyond the immediate ceasefire idea, Russia has presented the U.S. with a list of demands for a deal to end its war against Ukraine and reset relations with Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Kremlin declined to comment directly on that report but said there was a huge amount of incorrect information being published by the media.
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.
Russia is advancing swiftly in Kursk. The Defence Ministry said on Thursday that the town of Sudzha had been taken by Russia. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, which had on Wednesday reported that fighting was still ongoing.
Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, said Ukraine’s plans to use Kursk as a bargaining chip in possible future negotiations with Russia had failed and its gambit that its Kursk operation would force Russia to divert troops from its advance in eastern Ukraine had also not worked.
He said Russian forces had retaken 24 settlements and 259 square km (100 square miles) of land from Ukrainian forces in the last five days along with over 400 prisoners.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Perry, Toby Chopra, Philippa Fletcher)
