Russian sources sceptical of US 30-day ceasefire idea for Ukraine
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Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured.
PHOTO: REUTERS
MOSCOW – Russian sources on March 12 reacted warily to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire supported by Kyiv
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine
US President Donald Trump has reversed previous US policy on Russia, opening up bilateral talks with Moscow and suspending military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, saying it must agree to terms to end the war.
The United States agreed on March 11 to resume military aid and intelligence sharing after Kyiv said it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal.
A senior Russian source told Reuters that President Vladimir Putin would find it difficult to agree to the ceasefire idea without hashing out terms and getting some sort of guarantees.
“It is difficult for Putin to agree to this in its current form,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, told Reuters. “Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing.”
The source said that without guarantees alongside a ceasefire, Russia’s position could swiftly become weaker and that Russia could then be blamed by the West for failing to end the war.
Another senior Russian source said the ceasefire proposal looked from Moscow’s perspective to be a trap because Mr Putin would find it hard to halt the war without some concrete guarantees or pledges.
A third Russian source said the big picture was that the United States had agreed to resume military aid and intelligence sharing and had decorated that move with a ceasefire proposal.
The Kremlin has yet to comment.
Mr Putin said in December: “We don’t need a truce, we need a long-term peace secured by guarantees for the Russian Federation and its citizens. It is a difficult question how to ensure these guarantees.”
He told Russia’s Security Council, a type of modern-day Politburo, on Jan 20 that there “should not be a short truce, not some kind of respite for regrouping forces and rearmament with the aim of subsequently continuing the conflict, but a long-term peace”.
In June 2024, Mr Putin set out his terms for peace: Ukraine must officially drop its Nato ambitions
Russia controls 75 per cent of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and more than 99 per cent of the Luhansk region, according to Russian estimates.
Russia says the entirety of those four regions are now legally part of Russia and that they will never be returned to Ukraine, which says they have been illegally annexed 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 fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview given on March 11 but published on March 12, said that Russia would not accept Nato member troops “under any flag, in any capacity, on Ukrainian soil”.
Russia’s Rossiya 24 state television channel said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks about Ukraine being ready to talk appeared “rather naive”, given the history of Kyiv’s relations with Russia, while an influential Russian lawmaker said any peace would be on Moscow’s terms.
“Russia is advancing (in Ukraine), and therefore it will be different with Russia,” said Mr Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, the Upper House of Russia’s Parliament, in a post on Telegram.
“Any agreements – with all the understanding of the need for compromise – on our terms, not on American. And this is not boasting, but understanding that real agreements are still being written there, at the front. Which they should understand in Washington, too.” REUTERS
