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President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia agreed with U.S. proposals for a ceasefire in Ukraine, but that any truce would have to deal with the root causes of the conflict and that many crucial details needed to be sorted out.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the sharpest confrontation between Moscow and the West in decades.
Putin's support - though caveated - for the U.S. ceasefire proposal offers the best chance so far to end the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two as Ukraine had also agreed to the proposal at talks earlier in the week.
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U.S. President Donald Trump meets NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office
(Photo: Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters)
"We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities," Putin told reporters at a news conference in the Kremlin following talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. "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 thanked U.S. President Donald Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war, which both Moscow and Washington now cast as a deadly proxy war that could have escalated into World War Three.
Russia Advancing
Russian forces have been advancing since mid-2024 and control nearly a fifth of Ukraine's territory. Putin said Russian forces were moving forward along the entire frontline and said the ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine did not seek to simply use it to regroup. "How can we and how will we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will control (of the ceasefire) be organised?" Putin said. "These are all serious questions. There are issues that we need to discuss. And I think we need to talk to our American colleagues as well."
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Putin said he might call Trump to discuss the issue. Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow and expected to meet with the Russian president. "Hopefully they'll do the right thing," Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
After 9 hours of discussions in Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, Washington and Kiev announced that Ukraine agreed to a temporary cease-fire with Russia and that the U.S. would resume the provision of military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.