Putin suggests US ceasefire idea for Ukraine needs serious reworking

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia supported a US proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that fighting could not be paused until a number of crucial conditions were worked out or clarified.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 US ceasefire proposal looked designed to signal goodwill to Washington and open the door to further talks with US President Donald Trump.But Putin said any agreement must address what Moscow sees as the root causes of the conflict, a major caveat that suggests any ceasefire will take longer than Trump wants.“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin told reporters at the Kremlin.“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.”Putin has said he wants Ukraine to drop its ambitions to join NATO, Russia to control the entirety of the four Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, and the size of the Ukrainian army to be limited.He has also made clear he wants Western sanctions eased and a presidential election to be held in Ukraine, which Kyiv says is premature while martial law is in force.Putin listed ceasefire-related issues that he said now 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 with the potential to trigger World War Three.Trump, who said he was willing to talk to Putin by phone, called the statement “very promising” and said he hoped Moscow would “do the right thing”.Trump said Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, ha...