Cautious Russia weighs Ukraine ceasefire plan as US tries to seal a deal

By Guy Faulconbridge and Dmitry Antonov

MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was awaiting details from Washington about a proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine before responding while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hoped a deal would be struck within days.

The U.S. on Tuesday agreed to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing after Kyiv said at talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal.

The Kremlin said it was carefully studying the results of that meeting and awaited details from Rubio and White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Later in the day, the White House said Waltz had spoken with his Russian counterpart.

Senior Moscow sources added that a deal would have to take account of Russia's advances and address its concerns.

Speaking to reporters when his plane refueled in Ireland, Rubio said on Wednesday: "Here’s what we’d like the world to look like in a few days: Neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets, nothing ... and the talking starts."

In Washington, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had received "positive messages" about the potential for a truce, without giving details.

After Russian forces made gains in Ukraine in 2024, Trump reversed U.S. policy on the war, launching bilateral talks with Moscow and suspending military assistance to Ukraine, demanding that it take steps to end the conflict.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested a reporter was getting "a little ahead" of himself by asking if Russia intended to tie a ceasefire proposal to the lifting of international sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.

"Rubio and Waltz said that they would pass on detailed information to us through various channels about the essence of the conversation that took place in Jeddah. First, we must receive this information," Peskov said.

Rubio said the United States was hoping for a positive response, and that if the answer was "no" then it would tell Washington a lot about the Kremlin's true intentions.

He said that Europe would have to be involved in any security guarantee for Ukraine, and that the sanctions Europe has imposed would also be on the table.

French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Wednesday that about 15 countries had expressed interest in discussing a new security architecture for Ukraine.

Asked whether Russia could accept the ceasefire unconditionally, Rubio said: "That's what we want to know - whether they're prepared to do it unconditionally."

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed this week's meeting in Saudi Arabia between U.S. and Ukrainian officials as constructive, and said a potential 30-day ceasefire with Russia could be used to draft a broader peace deal.

UKRAINE SET TO LOSE FOOTHOLD IN RUSSIA'S KURSK REGION

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.

Ukrainian troops appeared on the point of losing their hard-won foothold inside Russia's Kursk region on Wednesday as Moscow claimed further advances there and military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv's forces were withdrawing.

Russian media group Agentstvo, which analysed Ukrainian open-source maps, said that Ukraine controlled just 150 square kilometres in Kursk now. A Ukrainian source said last year it had controlled 1,376 square kilometres of territory in Kursk.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that he is ready to talk about an end to the war and Trump says he thinks Putin is serious, though other Western leaders disagree.

Reuters reported in November that Putin was ready to negotiate a deal with Trump, but would refuse to make major territorial concessions and would insist Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.

A senior Russian source told Reuters that Putin would find it hard to agree to the ceasefire idea without hashing out terms and getting some sort of guarantees.

RUSSIA WANTS ITS ADVANCES TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, said on Telegram that Russia's advances in Ukraine must be taken into account.

"Real agreements are still being written there, at the front. Which they should understand in Washington, too," he said.

Putin has repeatedly said a short-term truce is not the way to end the war.

In June, he 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.

Ukraine says the regions have been annexed illegally and that it will never recognise Russian sovereignty over them.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a Russia-friendly president was toppled in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces then fighting Ukraine's armed forces in the east.

(Additional reporting by Reuters in Moscow; Daphne Psaledakis in Shannon, Ireland, Doina Chiacu and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Writing by Cynthia Osterman; Editing by Tom Hogue, Philippa Fletcher, Kevin Liffey and Diane Craft)