Russian officials were playing it close to the vest a day after Ukraine agreed to a Trump administration proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the war, as U.S. officials began to brief the Kremlin on details of talks a day earlier with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would tell Moscow that Kyiv was prepared to stop all battlefield activity and begin negotiating an end to the war, but Moscow was noncommittal on what compromises it was ready to make.
Mr. Rubio said Russia’s response would be a key marker in President Trump’s push for a peace deal, a push that has unnerved Ukraine and America’s European allies with its outreach to the long-shunned government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We’ll see what [Russia’s] response is. If their response is ‘yes,’ then we know we’ve made real progress and there’s a real chance of peace,” Mr. Rubio told reporters. “If their response is no, it’ll be highly unfortunate and it would make their intentions clear.”
Ukrainian officials pushed the theme that Russia was the last roadblock to at least a temporary deal. Andriy Yermak, a top official in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Cabinet, said it was obvious that the U.S. was in the best position to achieve a just peace.
Mr. Zelenskyy on Wednesday made the argument that the U.S. and its allies should step up support for Kyiv and put pressure on Moscow if Russia rejects the ceasefire plan. Washington has already agreed to end a “pause” on military aid and intelligence-sharing for Ukraine, announced by Mr. Trump in the wake of a contentious meeting with Mr. Zelenskyy in Washington late last month.
“I understand that we could count on strong steps,” he said. “I don’t know the details yet, but we are talking about sanctions and about strengthening Ukraine.”
Kremlin officials on Wednesday said they were waiting for U.S. officials to provide them with the details of the proposed temporary ceasefire, while Mr. Putin said he was open to another direct conversation with Mr. Trump similar to the one they had last month.
“We expect, as was said yesterday in Jeddah, Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Adviser [Mike] 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 told reporters.
Mr. Putin made a highly symbolic trip Wednesday to the Kursk region bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian forces seized and still hold a sizable chunk of the Russian oblast in a surprise offensive last summer, and the fate of the territory could prove a major obstacle to a peace deal if the Ukrainian forces do not withdraw.
Russia has been pushing back the Ukrainian troop positions in Kursk in recent weeks, and Mr. Putin said any soldiers captured from the Ukrainian incursion force would be treated as “terrorists.”
On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Mr. Putin has “repeatedly” emphasized his availability for talks about the Ukraine war, and repeated the offer to Mr. Trump.
“The ensuing contacts between Russia and American officials confirmed … that the dialogue cannot be interrupted,” Mr. Lavrov said Tuesday. “We are prepared to discuss the Ukraine issues with anyone who is genuinely interested in advancing this matter.”
But Russia has not shown any flexibility so far on its maximalist demands, including retaining a significant chunk of Ukrainian territory captured since the February 2022 invasion, refusing to allow troops from NATO nations to serve as peacekeepers to enforce a deal, and insisting that Ukraine be permanently blocked from joining the Western military alliance.
Officials in Moscow said a recent drone attack targeting several cities in Russia was “without a doubt” planned and timed to coincide with the opening of the U.S.-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Rubio headed a similar delegation that met with Mr. Lavrov and Russian top officials last month in a meeting also hosted by Riyadh.
“Using these barbaric methods, the Kyiv clique, which is suffering daily defeats on the battlefield, is trying to prove its ability to negotiate ‘from a position of strength,’” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The Zelenskyy regime, which has lost its grip on reality, has clearly shown a glaring lack of political will for achieving peace and a negotiated settlement of the conflict. It remains obsessed with the idea to defeat Russia … and seeking to draw its allies into its aggressive actions,” Russian officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Lavrov told a group of U.S. bloggers that Russia has been kept out of the loop over the negotiations about the war in Ukraine.
“Nobody is talking to us. They keep saying, ‘Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ but they do everything about Russia without Russia,” he said Wednesday.
He also pushed back against any efforts to send international peacekeepers to the region following a ceasefire deal. Mr. Lavrov noted that President Trump has said such an operation would normally require the consent of all the parties.
“Why should we give consent to the peacekeeping force, or peacekeeping group even, not force? So they want a force composed of the countries who declared us an enemy and now they would come as peacekeepers,” Mr. Lavrov said.
