MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia agreed with US 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 US 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.

“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.”

Russian president says cessation should lead to long-term peace and eliminate ‘original causes of the crisis’

The proposal was carried by US envoy Steve Witkoff who arrived in Moscow to present Washington’s plan for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, a source said. Ukraine agreed to the plan during talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, as US President Donald Trump pushes for a speedy end to the more than three-year conflict.

Putin thanked US 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 which 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.” Putin said he might call Trump to discuss the issue.

Trump had said in the White House on Wednesday that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine said it would support, to end what Trump called the “bloodbath”. Putin on Wednesday donned a camouflage uniform to visit a command post in the Kursk region of western Russia where Ukraine is poised to lose its foothold after a major offensive by Russian forces.

Ukraine’s commander-in-chief hinted late Wednesday some of its troops were pulling back in the region. Russia ruled out foreign peacekeepers in Ukraine and raised the possibility of relief from sanctions imposed on it.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2025