PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia supported a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that any truce would have to address the root causes of the conflict and many crucial details needed to be sorted out.
Reuters reported today that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the sharpest confrontation for decades between Moscow and the West.
Putin's heavily qualified support for the U.S. ceasefire proposal looked designed to signal goodwill to Washington and open the door to further talks with U.S. President Donald Trump. But the sheer number of clarifications and conditions that Putin said were needed appeared to rule out a swift ceasefire.
"We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities," Putin told reporters at 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."
He went on to list a slew of issues he said needed clarifying and thanked Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war. Both Moscow and Washington now cast the conflict as a deadly proxy war that could have escalated into World War Three.
Trump, who said he was willing to talk to the Russian leader by phone, called Putin's statement "very promising" and said he hoped Moscow would "do the right thing."
Trump said Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, were engaged in serious talks with the Russians in Moscow on the U.S. proposal, which Kyiv has already agreed to.
The US. president said those discussions on Thursday would show if Moscow was ready to make a deal. "Now we're going to see whether or not Russia is there, and if they're not, it'll be a very disappointing moment for the world," he said. - March 14, 2025
