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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Moscow is nominally “in favor” of a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, but stressed there are “serious issues” still to be resolved before the Kremlin could agree to anything.
“We agree with the proposals to stop the hostilities, but we proceed from the fact that this cessation should lead to long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of the crisis,” Putin said ahead of planned meeting with US envoy Steve Witkoff Thursday evening.
Russian officials have long argued that the war in Ukraine was caused by NATO’s expansion and Western assertiveness, and have called for the alliance to rethink its presence in Eastern Europe as part of a peace deal.
Putin highlighted several issues that needed to be addressed, including resolving Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, whether Ukraine would receive Western weapons during a ceasefire, and how a possible truce would be monitored.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday said Putin’s statement was “very manipulative.”
Putin, of course, is afraid to say directly to President Trump that he wants to continue this war, that he wants to kill Ukrainians,” the Ukrainian leader said in a video statement.
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Putin’s comments come as European leaders launched a fresh effort Thursday to unite the West amid a US-brokered push for a ceasefire in the Ukraine war.
G7 foreign ministers met in Quebec and NATO’s secretary general was due to hold talks with US President Donald Trump, who has presided over wild policy whipsaws, swerving between calling Ukraine’s leader a dictator and throwing him out of the White House to then patching up relations and agreeing a truce proposal.
Analysts are skeptical about whether Russia will ultimately agree to the proposal: An influential Russian think tank recently laid out a hard-line position with “maximalist demands,” The Washington Post reported, and even if a ceasefire were agreed, vexing questions are likely to make a lasting peace unlikely, the Financial Times warned.