In January, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia strongly rejected the idea of a temporary cease in Ukraine.
But after a month in which President Trump turned into American foreign foreign policy and his Russian forces have made progress in a basic battle, the Kremlin now seems intense at least to entertain the 30 -day ceasetime proposal made by Ukraine and the United States on Tuesday.
Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr Putin, told reporters on Wednesday that the Kremlin was “carefully studying” the result of Tuesday’s talks between the United States and Ukraine and their call for a monthly cease.
He said he expects the United States to inform Russia in the coming days of “the details of the negotiations that took place and the perceptions achieved”. He enabled another telephone between Mr Putin and Mr Trump, signaling that the Kremlin saw a ceasefire proposal as a part of a wider turmoil of diplomacy.
Late on Wednesday, Mr Putin tried to show that he had control of the events by landing military troubles and holding a television meeting with his top military officials accused of promoting Ukraine from the Kursk area of Russia, where Russia has made. He directed his troops to defeat Ukraine in the “shortest possible time possible” region, a move that, if successful, will deny Ukraine a key point of leverage in any negotiations with Russia.
Mr Putin has seen a gloomy reversal in his geopolitical possessions in the last month, as Mr Trump recognized US foreign policy in favor of Russia, competing with US allies and pending President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.
But the emergence of a common ceasefire proposal by the United States and Ukraine complicates things about Mr Putin. He rates the tension between his desires for an extensive victory in Ukraine and close ties with Mr Trump.
While Mr Trump says he wants to end the war as soon as possible, Mr Putin signaled that he would not stop struggling until he exports significant concessions from the West and Kiev, including the promise that Ukraine will not participate in NATO and that NATO will not be involved in NATO.
On January 20, when he congratulates Mr Trump on his inauguration, Mr Putin made it clear that the goal of Ukraine’s talks should not “be a short cessation of fire, not a break”. Russia, he said, called for “a long -term peace based on respect for the legitimate interests of all people, all the nations living in this region”.
Analysts say that Mr Putin’s opposition to a temporary ceasefire came from the mere calculation that with the Russian forces earning on the battlefield, Moscow will only resign from its leverage, stopping the battles without gaining concessions.
But a telephone call on February 12 between Mr Putin and Mr Trump and the subsequent White House alignment with Russia in the United Nations and elsewhere may have influenced Mr Putin’s account by making him more willing to remain on the good side of Mr. Trump.
This creates a fine act of balancing for the Kremlin.
Ilya Grashchenkov, a Moscow political analyst, said the Kremlin could be tempted to accept a truce that would have been “regularly unfavorable but strategically favorable” to “show that it is a peacemaker”.
While the Russians were not present in Tuesday’s talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration continued its commitment to the Kremlin. John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, spoke his Russian counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, on Tuesday, the Russian foreign intelligence service said Wednesday.
Steve Witkoff, the envoy to Mr Trump, who met with Mr Putin for several hours last month, plans to return to Russia in the coming days, according to two people familiar with the issue, who called for anonymity to discuss the internal plans. Mr Trump said on Tuesday that he thought he would talk to Mr Putin this week and told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that his negotiators were on the way.
“People are going to Russia right now as we are talking,” Mr Trump said during a meeting with the Prime Minister of Ireland. “And we hope we can get a rest from Russia.”
In a sign of Moscow’s ongoing aggressive charm that addressed the Trump Camp, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a 90 -minute interview on Wednesday that Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov gave three American bloggers, including Foreign News.
Speaking English, Mr Lavrov praised Trump’s administration for the reversal of the “departure of the Democrats from Christian values” and said Russia was ready for the “normal relations” offered by the United States.
“It is certainly not impossible for the Russians to accept it,” said Samuel Charap, a Russian analyst at Rand Corporation for the 30 -day offering. “Not because they want an unconditional, temporary ceasefire, but because they now have a share in relationships with Washington.”
Mr Putin’s account could also be influenced by Russia’s progress in recent days, promoting Ukrainian troops from Kursk, the Russian border area where Ukraine occupied several hundreds of square miles of ground in a surprise invasion.
Mr Zelensky said he was planning to use this land as a negotiating chip in future talks, but the Kremlin signaled that he would refuse to negotiate as long as he held the territory.
With the Kursk region mostly in the Russian hands, Mr Putin is no longer in danger of losing the face by agreeing with a ceasefire that would leave Ukraine in control of a Russian territory, said Sergei Markov, a Moscow political analyst.
A further motivation to agree, Mr Markov said, was to ensure that Russia “does not look like a maniac war” in the eyes of non -Western countries that have avoided imposing sanctions on Moscow. But, he said, he expected that Mr Putin would insist on the conditions, such as the interruption of weapons supplies in Ukraine for the duration of the ceasefire.
“Russia will probably say,” yes, but – “Mr Markov said in a telephone interview.
Russia’s popular Pro-War Bloggers on Wednesday did not show much excitement to cease fire. Some of them have expressed concern that a truce could eventually lead to a wider agreement with the United States that, in their view, it would betray the original goals of the war and eventually lead to Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.
A blogger, who goes by the name Alex Parker, returns, argued in a position on Wednesday that a peace deal will allow Ukraine to “easily go down and get ready for the next round”.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed to the report.
