President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia agreed with US proposals for a ceasefire in Ukraine, but that any truce would have to deal with the root causes of the conflict and that many crucial details needed to be sorted out.
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 sharpest confrontation between Moscow and the West in decades.
Putin’s support — though caveated — for the US ceasefire proposal offers the best chance so far to end the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two as Ukraine had also agreed to the proposal at talks earlier in the week.
“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin told reporters at a news conference in the Kremlin following talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. “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 thanked US President Donald Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war which both Moscow and Washington now cast as a deadly proxy war which could have escalated into World War Three.
He also thanked the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa for their “noble mission to end the fighting,” a statement that signaled those countries’ potential involvement in a ceasefire deal.
Russia has said it will not accept peacekeepers from any Nato members to monitor a prospective truce.
Putin’s foreign affairs adviser said the president planned to meet with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, later on Thursday.
RUSSIA ADVANCING
Russian forces have been advancing since mid-2024 and control nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Putin said Russian forces were moving forward along the entire frontline and said the ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine did not seek to simply use it to regroup.
Putin said Russian soldiers were currently in the midst of an offensive aimed at driving Kyiv out the Kursk region.
“If we stop hostilities for 30 days, what does that mean? That everyone who is there will go out without a fight?… How will supervision (of the ceasefire) be organised? These are all serious questions. “I think we need to talk to our American colleagues… Maybe have a phone call with President Trump and discuss this with him,” he told reporters.
Trump had said in the White House on Wednesday that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine said it would support, to end what Trump called the “bloodbath.”
Putin on Wednesday donned a camouflage uniform to visit a command post in the Kursk region of western Russia where Ukraine is poised to lose its foothold after a major offensive by Russian forces.
Agencies
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