The Kremlin said on Wednesday it awaits a briefing from U.S. officials on the details of a 30-day ceasefire proposal that was accepted by Ukrainian representatives at a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
“We expect, as was said yesterday in Jeddah, Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Adviser Waltz to inform us through various channels about the details of the negotiations and the understanding reached in the coming days,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz are in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks to arrange a ceasefire in the war, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
After eight hours of meetings on Tuesday, Rubio announced the Ukrainians have accepted the American proposal for a 30-day full ceasefire.
Ukrainian officials came to the meeting with a much less ambitious proposal that would only have paused long-range air and sea-based attacks, while combat would continue along the front lines.
“You have to stop shooting at each other and that’s what the president has wanted to see, and that’s the commitment we got today from the Ukrainian side,” Rubio said on Tuesday. “We’ll take this offer now to the Russians. We hope the Russians will reciprocate.”
“The Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear, that they share President Trump’s vision for peace, they share his determination to end the fighting, to end the killing, to end the tragic meat grinder of people,” Waltz added.
While the Kremlin is at least willing to withhold final judgment until it receives a detailed briefing, Russian military bloggers and devoted supporters of President Vladimir Putin angrily dismissed the U.S. proposal as a “trap” that would only give the Ukrainians time to reposition and rearm their forces.
The Moscow Times on Wednesday quoted some of the angry responses from Russian commentators:
“The first point: 30 days is an utterly insignificant period, needed by Ukraine, not Russia, to replenish losses and prepare new defense lines. The second point follows from the first. The Americans will resume military aid to Ukraine, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces will actively use during a ceasefire to strengthen and prepare for new attacks,” the pro-war Telegram channel Archangel of Special Forces said to its audience of more than 1.1 million subscribers.
“And the question: is this something we need against the backdrop of the collapsing Ukrainian front? We think not,” it added.
“Trump is rushing to end the war in Ukraine because his Deep State opponents have regrouped and launched a massive counterattack against him and [Elon] Musk. But he has no clear idea how to do it and is not yet ready to unilaterally withdraw from the war. This was the trap set by the Democrats,” said Russian ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin.
Many of these angry Russian responses asserted that Ukraine is clearly losing the war, so Moscow would be foolish to lift military pressure by agreeing to a ceasefire. The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that it has recaptured most of the villages occupied by Ukrainian forces in their surprise August counter-invasion of the Kursk region.
“Shove your peace initiatives up your ass. Last year, you were given the conditions for a ceasefire. You responded with an invasion. We got the message,” snarled Russian war correspondent Alexander Kots.
Peskov was more conciliatory in his press conference on Wednesday, insisting Russian officials are “closely examining” the U.S. proposal.
In addition to a complete cessation of hostilities, the U.S. deal would include a prisoner of war exchange and “the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children” – a topic the Russians do not like to discuss. Putin is currently the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his role in the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.
Peskov said he was aware of President Donald Trump’s desire to discuss the ceasefire proposal directly with Putin, but no such meeting has been scheduled yet. The last publicly-acknowledged conversation between the two leaders was a 90-minute telephone call on February 12.
While some Russian military officials gave a milder version of the military blogger response to foreign reporters, grumbling that Russia’s position in Ukraine is now strong enough to make a ceasefire counterproductive, the far-left New York Times (NYT) grudgingly conceded on Wednesday that Trump might have made Putin more willing to consider a ceasefire deal after he “realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor, antagonized U.S. allies and excoriated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House.”
Putin rejected the notion of a short-term ceasefire on the day of Trump’s inauguration, expressing his preference for “a long-term peace based on respect for the legitimate interests of all people, all nations who live in this region” – by which he meant a near-total Russian victory.
Putin may now be more willing to settle for a “tactically unfavorable but strategically favorable” truce to “show he’s a peacemaker,” as Moscow political analyst Ilya Graschenkov put it.
“It certainly is not impossible that the Russians would accept this – not because they want an unconditional, temporary cease-fire, but because they now have a stake in relations with Washington,” RAND corporation analyst Samuel Charap said.
Analysts said that contrary to the belligerent posture of Russian military commentators, Russia’s success at pushing the Ukrainians out of Kursk could actually make a ceasefire deal more palatable, because a significant threat to Russian security and national pride has been resolved. This could make it possible for Putin to accept a ceasefire without looking weak.
On his way back to the United States from Saudi Arabia, Rubio told reporters he expected to “have contact” with Russia by the end of Wednesday.
“If they say no, it’ll tell us a lot about what their goals are and what their mindset is, but I don’t want to go into that before they’ve even answered us,” Rubio said during a refueling stop in Ireland.
“The United States has not provided armaments to Russia. The United States is not providing assistance to Russia. Every single sanction that has been imposed on Russia remains in place,” he noted.
“These things continue to be in place, but we don’t think it’s constructive for me to stand here today and begin to issue threats about what we’re going to do if Russia says no. Let’s hope they say yes,” Rubio said.
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