 that it needed to be briefed by the United States on the outcome of US-Ukrainian talks in Saudi Arabia before it would comment on whether a proposed ceasefire was acceptable to Russia.){kind=link}
The Kremlin shared on Wednesday (Mar 12) that it needed to be briefed by the United States on the outcome of US-Ukrainian talks in Saudi Arabia before it would comment on whether a proposed ceasefire was acceptable to Russia.
After more than eight hours of talks with Ukrainian officials in Jeddah on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US would take an offer of a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, accepted by Ukrainian officials, to Russia. The United States also agreed to resume military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after earlier suspending them and opening up bilateral talks with Russia in a reversal of longstanding US policy on Ukraine.
Waiting for the briefing
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Russia was waiting for a briefing from Washington. He did not rule out the possibility of a phone call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, which he said could be organized very quickly if needed. A senior Russian source told earlier that Russia would need to hash out the terms of any ceasefire and get some sort of guarantees.
“It is difficult for Putin to agree to this in its current form,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation. “Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing.” Russia controls just under a fifth of Ukraine, about 113,000 Sq km and has been edging forward for months.
Ukraine seized a sliver of western Russia in August as a bargaining chip but its grip there is weakening, according to open source maps of the war and Russian estimates. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people and triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Prior to this meet, Ukraine had launched its biggest drone attack on the Russian capital on Tuesday (Mar 11) with at least 91 drones targeting Moscow, killing at least two people, sparking fires, closing airports and forcing dozens of flights to be diverted, Russian officials said.
A total of 337 Ukrainian drones were downed over Russia, including 91 over the Moscow region and 126 over the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been pulling back, the defense ministry said.
The massive dawn drone attack unfurled just as a team of Ukrainian officials was preparing to meet a United States team in Saudi Arabia to seek grounds for possible peace talks in the three-year-old war, and as Russian forces tried to encircle thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the western Russian region of Kursk.
However, there was no sign of panic then in Moscow, commuters went to work as normal in central Moscow. Russia’s aviation watchdog said flights were suspended at all four of Moscow’s airports to ensure air safety after the attacks. Two other airports, in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions, both east of Moscow, were also closed.
Moscow officials have now signaled that Russia is wary of the Ukraine-backed US proposal on the 30-day ceasefire. “Russia is advancing [on the battlefield], so it will be different with Russia,” Senator Konstantin Kosachev noted in a post on the messaging app Telegram. “Any agreements should be on our terms, not American.”
A senior Russian source told that Russia would need to hash out the terms of any ceasefire and get guarantees of some description. “It is difficult for Putin to agree to this in its current form,” the source said. “Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing.”
Russians laud US
However, Russians laud US efforts to end Ukraine war. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched three years ago, has ravaged much of the war-torn nation and killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Both sides have lost enormous numbers of soldiers.
But now on the streets in Russia, some feel hopeful about a possible end to the war and Western-imposed sanctions. Some are optimistic that the hostility with the United States, at its peak under former President Joe Biden, could end as President Donald Trump’s administration works to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is the latest world leader to react to the US-proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine. “We hope that it will materialize, and we hope that it will pave the way for peace, a just peace,” he said, reaffirming that the UN Charter and resolutions, as well as international law, are the parameters for a just peace.
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