By Jeff Mason and Joseph Ax
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Tuesday to stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities temporarily but declined to endorse a full 30-day ceasefire that President Donald Trump hoped would be the first step toward a permanent peace deal.
Ukraine said it would support the scaled-back agreement, which would require both countries to hold off firing on each other’s energy infrastructure for about a month. Experts said Putin avoided making significant concessions in what could be a play for time as Russian troops advance in eastern Ukraine.
The White House said talks aimed at a broader peace plan would begin immediately, following a lengthy call between Trump and Putin on Tuesday.
It was unclear whether Ukraine would be involved in those talks, which will take place in the Middle East and cover a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea as well as a more complete ceasefire and a permanent peace deal.
Putin ordered the Russian military to stop attacks against energy sites after speaking with Trump, the Kremlin said.
But he raised concerns that a temporary ceasefire might allow Ukraine to rearm and mobilize more soldiers, and doubled down on his demand that any resolution required an end to all military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, according to a Kremlin statement.
Trump told Fox News aid to Ukraine did not come up in the conversation.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country would support the proposal to stop strikes on energy facilities and infrastructure for 30 days. He said Russia launched more than 40 drones late on Tuesday, hitting a hospital in Sumy and other areas, including the Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital.
“Today, Putin de facto rejected the proposal for a complete ceasefire. It would be right for the world to reject in response any attempts by Putin to drag out the war,” Zelenskiy said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
Trump, who has had a complicated relationship with Zelenskiy, spoke positively of his call with Putin.
“We had a great call. It lasted almost two hours,” Trump said on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” show.
But the U.S. president did not get what he wanted. Ukraine, which Trump had previously described as being more difficult to work with than Russia, had agreed to the U.S. proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire. Putin did not.
“This call brought to light how difficult of an interlocutor Russia is going to be and the general unwillingness of Russia to talk about making real progress in stopping this war,” said Kristine Berzina, a managing director at the German Marshall Fund think tank. She called the limited ceasefire “a very small step forward.”
Since Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion, Ukraine has tried to fight back against its much larger neighbor with drone and missile strikes deep in Russian territory, including on energy facilities. Those attacks, which Moscow says amount to terrorism, have allowed Kyiv to keep pressure on Russia’s economy.
That means a ceasefire on attacking energy infrastructure could benefit Russia, said Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In a social media post after the call, Trump said he and Putin had agreed to work quickly toward a ceasefire and eventually a permanent peace agreement.
“Many elements of a Contract for Peace were discussed, including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed, and both President Putin and President Zelenskyy would like to see it end,” he wrote, using an alternate spelling for the Ukrainian leader.
Ukraine said on March 11 it was prepared to accept a full 30-day ceasefire, a step that U.S. officials said would lead to a more substantial round of negotiations to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two. The war has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions and reduced entire towns to rubble.
Trump has hinted that a permanent peace deal could include territorial concessions by Kyiv and control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Zelenskiy, who arrived in Helsinki for an official visit on Tuesday shortly after Trump and Putin’s call ended, said Europe must be included in Ukraine peace talks.
The talks between Trump and Putin came as Israel resumed its attacks on Hamas in Gaza, threatening a fragile truce and underscoring the difficulty of securing lasting ceasefires in long-running conflicts.
The two leaders also discussed how to prevent future conflicts in the Middle East and “shared the view that Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel,” the White House said.
U.S. SHIFT WORRIES EUROPEAN ALLIES
Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine’s east and pushing back Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk region.
The agreement on a narrow ceasefire reflects Trump’s desire to normalize relations with Russia and suggests that Putin may be playing for time, said Susan Colbourn, an expert on European security issues at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
“It was striking how little concession Trump is asking from the Russians, although they invaded their neighbor,” Colbourn said.
The U.S. president’s overtures to Putin since returning to the White House in January have alarmed U.S. allies.
Ukraine and its Western allies have long described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an imperialist land grab, and Zelenskiy has accused Putin of deliberately prolonging the war.
Zelenskiy says Ukraine’s sovereignty is not negotiable and Russia must surrender the territory it has seized.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned on Tuesday that Russia had massively expanded its military-industrial production capacity in preparation for “future confrontation with European democracies.”
Speaking at a press conference in Berlin with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the limited ceasefire was an important first step but again called for a complete ceasefire. He reiterated that Ukraine must be part of any final decision.
Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and most of four eastern Ukrainian regions following its invasion in 2022. All told, it controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Putin said he sent troops into Ukraine because NATO’s creeping expansion threatened Russia’s security. He has demanded Ukraine drop any ambition of joining the Western military alliance.
Putin has also said Russia must keep control of Ukrainian territory it has seized, Western sanctions should be eased and Kyiv must stage a presidential election. Zelenskiy, elected in 2019, has remained in office under martial law he imposed because of the war.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Andrea Shalal, Nandita Bose, Costas Pitas and Ismail Shakil in Washington; Mark Trevelyan, Andrew Osborn, Darya Korsunskaya and Maxim Rodionov in London and Miranda Murray in Berlin; Writing by Joseph Ax, Jeff Mason and James Oliphant; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Jonathan Boyle, Rod Nickel and Don Durfee)
