A senior aide to President Vladimir Putin has rejected any temporary cease-fire with Ukraine just hours before a US delegation arrived in Russia for talks with Moscow where they will urge the Kremlin to agree to a 30-day cease-fire proposal or face sanctions.
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Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said in an interview broadcast on state television on March 13 that U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed cease-fire, which Kyiv has agreed to, would only give Ukraine time to recover from pressure Russia has been exerting on its troops.
“I have stated our position that this is nothing other than a temporary respite for the Ukrainian military, nothing more,” said Ushakov, Ushakov, who has more than half a century of involvement in diplomacy and is considered to be the Kremlin’s chief foreign policy adviser.
He added that he had laid out Moscow’s position in a phone call to US national-security adviser Mike Waltz a day earlier.
“It seems to me that no one needs any steps that (merely) imitate peaceful actions in this situation,” he said, noting that Russia wants a long-term settlement that addresses its interests and concerns into account.
During a March 12 White House meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, Trump expressed confidence about securing a cease-fire for Ukraine and said that U.S. negotiators were “traveling to Russia right now, as we speak.”
On March 13, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the US team reportedly headed up by Trump’s special envoy. The state news agency TASS later reported that the envoy, Steve Witkoff, had arrived in Moscow.
Trump had earlier told reporters that Russia “has no way out but cease-fire. If needed, we will sanction it, but I hope we won’t need to.”
The US President has made ending Russia’s more than three-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine a top priority since taking office for a second term less than two months ago, quickly dispatching his top officials to Moscow and Kyiv to prepare the groundwork for peace talks.
His latest comments on the war come after Kyiv agreed to the temporary cease-fire plan following nine hours of talks with Trump administration officials in Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, it is unclear how interested Russia is in the idea, with Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to speak on Ukraine on March 13 after talks with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
“Regrettably, for more than a day already, the world has yet to hear a meaningful response from Russia to the proposals made,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X on March 13.
“This once again demonstrates that Russia seeks to prolong the war and postpone peace for as long as possible. We hope that U.S. pressure will be sufficient to compel Russia to end the war,” he added.
Putin Visits Kursk
As Trump spoke at the White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin was donning combat fatigues for a visit to troops in Russia’s Kursk region, where fierce fighting is currently taking place and Moscow’s forces are advancing.
Ukraine seized a swath of the Kursk region in a stealth incursion in August, a move seen as an effort to divert Russian forces from eastern Ukraine and use the territory as a bargaining chip in any peace talks.
That strategy is now at risk of failing as Russian forces slowly push the Ukrainians out of Kursk, having retaken more than half the territory initially captured by Ukraine.
During his visit to Kursk — his only visit since the incursion began — Putin urged his troops to retake the region in its entirety “as soon as possible.”
He also said that captured Ukrainian soldiers would be treated as “terrorists.”
In an interview with Current Time, the editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta Evropa, Kirill Martynov, said that the US proposal of a cease-fire free of additional conditions had angered pro-war elements in Russian society, including so called “Z-Channels” on Telegram.
Putin’s appearance in military garb was a response, said Martynov, and a way of showing this “more aggressive group of citizens” that “everything is under control, and he continues to wage war.”
“Absolutely in his style, after the situation has improved [in the Kursk region], he appears and takes credit for what is happening,” Martynov said.
Unconfirmed reports on March 12 indicated that Ukraine has begun to draw back units as Russian officials claimed their troops had captured more settlements, including Sudzha, the largest settlement that Ukraine had taken in the offensive.
Ukraine’s top military commander, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said that fighting continued in and around Sudzha.
“Despite increased pressure from the Russian and North Korean forces, we will maintain the defense of the Kursk region as long as it is appropriate and necessary,” Syrskiy wrote on Telegram.
In a Facebook post, Syrskiy said that saving soldiers lives is a priority and that Ukrainian troops would “maneuver to more favorable positions, if necessary,” wording often used to describe a retreat.
Concessions?
Trump has so far used Washington’s significant leverage over Ukraine — namely military aid and intelligence sharing — to get Kyiv to agree to the cease-fire proposal, which, if implemented, would leave almost 20 percent of the country in Russia’s hands for the time being at least.
The United States announced after the talks in Saudi Arabia that it would immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and restore military aid to Ukraine, which could be a boost to Ukrainian forces, whose battlefield positions have been under heavy pressure, particularly in Kursk.
Trump lacks that kind of leverage with Russia, which has navigated sweeping US and European sanctions placed on its economy following the invasion much better than most experts forecasted.
Putin may seek to drag out talks with Washington over a cease-fire to improve Russia’s position on the battlefield, experts say, and hence at the negotiating table when and if Moscow and Kyiv hammer out a peace deal.
Trump has also hinted that Ukraine would have to make concessions on land, something more and more experts say is inevitable given Russia’s momentum on the battlefield.
“When we talk cease-fire [with Ukraine], we talked land, who’s withdrawing — we discussed a lot of things [with Ukraine],” Trump said.
“We don’t want to waste time, people are dying. Russia is not in the best situation now. I hope [Putin] gets a cease-fire.”
Trump has said fresh sanctions could do “very unpleasant, very bad things, devastating for Russia,” but has offered few details.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the cease-fire proposal and said he hoped it would be used as a draft for a lasting peace deal that included security guarantees for Ukraine.
“It’s now up to Russia what is next,” he said at a March 12 press conference, and whether “it wants to continue its aggression against Ukraine or not.”
Moscow has so far declined to comment on the specifics of the proposal for the 30-day cease-fire.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was “carefully studying” the joint US-Ukraine statement issued following the Jeddah talks and will wait to comment until Russian negotiators receive more detailed information from Washington.
Reaction on the streets of Moscow, however, was mixed, with one man saying that “agreeing to a truce now, when the enemy is weakened, is completely inappropriate and wrong.”
But others welcomed the news. “We just want this to end as soon as possible so that people stop dying,” said one woman in the Russian capital. “So many have already perished.”
Meanwhile, on the streets of Kyiv, some Ukrainians told RFE/RL’s Current Time that they doubted whether Russia would sign on to, and adhere to, a cease-fire deal.
“I’m not sure what to say, but it all seems implausible, frankly speaking,” said one Kyiv man, while a woman in the capital said the cease-fire talks were “meaningless without Russia taking part.”
