Putin agrees in principle with proposal for Ukraine ceasefire and says more discussions are needed

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he agrees in principle with a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, but he emphasized that the terms are yet to be worked out and added that any truce should pave the way to lasting peace.

‘‘The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it," Putin told a news conference in Moscow. ‘’But there are issues that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk about it with our American colleagues and partners and, perhaps, have a call with President Trump and discuss it with him."

President Donald Trump said there have been ‘’good signals'' coming out of Russia and offered guarded optimism about Putin’s statement. He reiterated that he’s ready to speak with Putin and underscored that it was time to end the war.

Putin “put out a very promising statement, but it wasn’t complete,‘’ Trump said Thursday at a start of a meeting at the White House with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. ‘’Now we’re going to see whether or not Russia’s there. And if they’re not, it’ll be a very disappointing moment for the world.‘’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin is ‘’essentially preparing to reject'' the ceasefire.

Putin ‘’is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to continue this war, that he wants to kill Ukrainians,‘’ Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the nation. ‘’That is why, in Moscow, they are surrounding the idea of a ceasefire with such preconditions that nothing will come of it — or at least, it will be delayed as long as possible.‘’

The Russian president, he added, ‘’often acts this way. He doesn’t say ‘no’ outright but ensures that everything drags on and that normal solutions become impossible.‘’

Putin, who launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, noted the need to control possible breaches of the truce and signaled that Russia would seek guarantees that Ukraine would not use the break in hostilities to rearm and continue mobilization.

‘‘We agree with the proposals to halt the fighting, but we proceed from the assumption that the ceasefire should lead to lasting peace and remove the root causes of the crisis,‘’ Putin said.

The Russian leader made the remarks just hours after the arrival of Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow for talks on the ceasefire, which Ukraine has accepted. A Kremlin adviser said Putin planned to meet with Witkoff later Thursday.

The diplomatic effort coincided with a Russian claim that its troops have driven the Ukrainian army out of a key town in Russia’s Kursk border region, where Moscow has been trying for seven months to dislodge Ukrainian troops from their foothold.

Russia questions details of truce offer

Putin said it appeared that the U.S. persuaded Ukraine to accept a ceasefire and that Ukraine is interested because of the battlefield situation, particularly in Kursk.

Referring to the Ukrainian troops in Kursk, he questioned what will happen to them if the ceasefire takes hold: ‘’Will all those who are there come out without a fight? Or will the Ukrainian leadership order them to lay down arms and surrender?"

Putin thanked Trump ‘’for paying so much attention to the settlement in Ukraine.‘’

He also thanked the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa for their ‘’noble mission to end the fighting,‘’ a statement that suggested those countries could be involved in a ceasefire deal. Russia has said it will not accept peacekeepers from any NATO members to monitor a prospective truce.

Putin’s seemingly friendly tone toward the White House reflected the astonishing shift in U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine since Trump returned to office in January.

Under the administration of former President Joe Biden, the United States was Ukraine’s staunchest and most powerful ally and a force for isolating the Kremlin. But Trump’s election threw that policy into reverse.

Trump briefly cut off critical military aid and intelligence sharing in an apparent effort to push Kyiv to enter talks to end the war, and Zelenskyy had a testy meeting at the White House on Feb. 28 in which Trump questioned whether Ukraine wanted to halt the war.

The Trump administration has also repeatedly embraced Kremlin positions on the conflict, including indicating that Ukraine’s hopes of joining NATO are unlikely to be realized and that it probably will not get back the land that Russia’s army occupies, which amounts to nearly 20% of the country.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that it recaptured the town of Sudzha, a Ukrainian operations hub in Kursk, came hours after Putin visited his commanders in the Kursk region. The claim could not be independently verified. Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment.

Administration repeats threat of new sanctions

As Trump seeks a diplomatic end to the war, he has made veiled threats to hit Russia with new sanctions if it does not engage with peace efforts.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC Thursday that Trump is ‘’willing to apply maximum pressure on both sides,‘’ including sanctions that reach the highest scale on Russia.

The U.S. still has about $3.85 billion in congressionally authorized funding for future arms shipments to Ukraine, but the Trump administration has shown no interest so far in using that authority to send additional weapons as it awaits the outcome of peace overtures.

By signaling its openness to a ceasefire at a time when the Russian military has the upper hand in the war, Ukraine has presented the Kremlin with a dilemma — whether to accept a truce and abandon hopes of making new gains, or reject the offer and risk derailing a cautious rapprochement with Washington.

The Ukrainian army’s foothold inside Russia has been under intense pressure for months from the renewed effort by Russian forces, backed by North Korean troops. Ukraine’s daring incursion last August led to the first occupation of Russian soil by foreign troops since World War II and embarrassed the Kremlin.

Ukraine launched the raid in a bid to counter the unceasingly grim news from the front line, as well as to draw Russian troops away from the battlefield inside Ukraine and to gain a bargaining chip in any peace talks. But the incursion did not significantly change the dynamic of the war.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late Wednesday that Russian forces were in control of Sudzha, a town close to the border that previously was home to about 5,000 people.

Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russian aircraft conducted so many strikes on Kursk that Sudzha had been almost completely destroyed. He did not comment on whether Ukraine still controlled the settlement but said his country was ‘’maneuvering (troops) to more advantageous lines.‘’

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Associated Press Writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine