Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country was ready for a ceasefire, provided that it offered lasting peace that addressed the root causes of the conflict.
“We agree with the proposals to stop the hostilities,” the Russian leader said at a news conference Thursday. While Russia would support a pause in the fighting “there are issues that need to be discussed,” he said, adding that he may need to “have a phone call with Trump.”
Putin had previously expressed concern that the temporary ceasefire suggested by the U.S. and Ukraine would give Kyiv's forces an opportunity to regroup. Details like who would monitor and guarantee the truce would need to be considered, he said.
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WATCH HEREBut this is the first clear indication of Moscow's reaction to the temporary 30-day ceasefire plan sketched out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Ukrainian counterparts in Saudi Arabia this week. President Donald Trump has suggested he could hit Russia with sanctions if they reject the proposal.
Earlier on Thursday Putin's foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov had called the outlined plan "nothing else than a temporary respite for the Ukrainian military, nothing more."
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SIGN UP He told Russian state media that the country's "goal is still a long-term peaceful settlement ... [that] takes into account the legitimate interests of our country."
"Steps that imitate peaceful actions, it seems to me, are of no use to anyone," he added, also saying that he conveyed that position to U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz in a phone call Wednesday.
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Putin has long held maximalist demands for ending a war in which Russia believes it has the upper hand. He wants Ukraine to withdraw from its regions partly occupied by Russia — essentially giving even more land to the Kremlin — while promising never to join NATO and protecting Russian culture and language inside the country.
Earlier Thursday, the Russian president urged his own soldiers to secure a quick and decisive victory while on a visit to the frontlines in the only Russian region where Ukrainian troops hold territory.
The former KGB agent dressed in military fatigues visited Kursk, the only region of Russia partly occupied by Russian troops. Soon after, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had recaptured the town of Sudzha, the largest settlement previously occupied by Ukrainian forces.
“Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible time frame, is to decisively defeat the enemy entrenched in the Kursk region,” Putin said. He also suggested creating “a security zone” on the border.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday in a media briefing that “there is no doubt that the Kursk region will be liberated soon enough.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who outlined the ceasefire proposal with Ukrainian counterparts in Saudi Arabia this week, may discuss the war when he meets with the top diplomats at the Group of Seven, or G-7, summit in Quebec, Canada on Thursday.
That might be an awkward appointment for Rubio given President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to take over Canada.
American and Russian officials have this week been talking behind the scenes. Trump has dispatched his envoy Steve Witkoff to Russia, while threatening sanctions for the Kremlin.
“I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
Despite this threat, Trump has asked few concessions from the Kremlin, while openly suggesting Ukraine will have to agree to many of Putin’s demands.
The White House said Witkoff would be in Russia this week but declined to say when. Russia’s state-run Tass news agency cited the Flightradar tracking website saying that Witkoff’s plane had crossed into Russian airspace Thursday morning.
On Thursday afternoon, Ushakov told Russian news outlet Izvestia that Putin and Witkoff will be having a closed door meeting later in the day.
The suggestion from talks in Saudi Arabia of an interim 30-day ceasefire has been welcomed by European leaders. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned them in his nightly address Wednesday about Russia's history of breaking truces.
“The key is our partners’ ability to ensure that Russia is ready not to deceive, but to truly end the war,” he said.
Ukrainian officials and citizens say they want peace, but only alongside security guarantees that ensure the Kremlin does not attack again.
“I think 99% of Ukrainians wants the war to end in a fair way,” Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv oblast, told NBC News on Wednesday. “We want some guarantees that it will not come back in a couple of years.”
Here, in the southern city of Mykolaiv, some residents are deeply unimpressed by what they see as Trump’s attempts to force Ukraine into an unfavorable and risky settlement.
It’s like “a young child’s tricks,” said Yuriy, 46, a construction worker pushing his month-old baby in a stroller near the city’s memorial for dead soldiers. “My daughter is acting in her one-month life better than trump in his 70-plus years. She at least s---s in her diapers, and that guy s---s on the whole world.”
One country taking no chances is Poland, the former Eastern Bloc nation that raised defense spending to 4.7% this year and is among Russia’s most vocal critics.
Polish President Andrzej Duda told the Financial Times newspaper Thursday that he wanted the U.S. to redeploy American nuclear weapons from Western Europe to inside his country.
“There should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east,” he said. “For me, this is obvious.”
Gabe Joselow contributed.
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