Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a cease-fire would have to deal with the root causes of the conflict before Moscow would agree to halt its invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday expressed appreciation for a U.S.-backed cease-fire in Ukraine but stopped short of agreeing to the framework.
Putin said that any cease-fire would have to deal with the root causes of the conflict and that many details needed to be sorted out before Moscow would agree to halt its invasion.
“We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities,” Putin told reporters at a Kremlin news conference. “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 did not explain what those causes were, but in the past, he has demanded that Ukraine be permanently barred from joining NATO and that no foreign power ever station troops on Ukrainian soil.
Those lofty goals are a walk back from Putin’s original stated objectives for the invasion, which included the complete demilitarization of Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the proposal for a 30-day cease-fire to end what Trump called the “bloodbath” in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already agreed to the cease-fire framework, following a days-long pause in American assistance to the embattled country.
The United States agreed on Tuesday to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said during talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a cease-fire proposal.
In the time since Zelenskyy accepted Trump’s proposal, Russia has stepped up its attacks against Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region.
Russia claims that its troops have driven the Ukrainian army out of a key town in Kursk, where Moscow has been trying for seven months to dislodge Ukrainian troops.
Though Ukrainian forces occupied only a small part of Kursk, the region is of critical importance as its control will dictate whether or not Kyiv has a bargaining chip with which to compel Moscow to return some of Ukraine’s occupied territories.
Putin added that he supports “the idea of ending this conflict by peaceful means” and would speak further with U.S. negotiators about the issue.
