US-Russia talks take spotlight after Kyiv agrees to truce terms

Greg Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Mar 12, 2025

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Russia is gearing up to respond to President Donald Trump’s call to accept a ceasefire after Ukraine agreed to a 30-day truce at talks with the U.S. in Saudi Arabia.

The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe agreed to maintain regular contacts during a phone call on Tuesday to discuss cooperation between their agencies, the Interfax news service reported on Wednesday.

Trump said U.S. officials would talk with Russian counterparts on Wednesday and that it’s possible he could speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as this week. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff is due to travel to Moscow to meet with Putin this week, Bloomberg News earlier reported.

Moscow is waiting for details of the agreement reached in the Saudi city of Jeddah and doesn’t rule out a phone call between Trump and Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, according to the Interfax news agency.

Any eventual realization of the truce accord with Kyiv now rests upon Russia’s readiness to halt the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that it started in February 2022. Trump on Tuesday told reporters “it takes two to tango,” but the outline of the deal doesn’t do what Russia has previously said it needs for a cessation of hostilities. That ups the ante for upcoming U.S. and Russian engagement if Trump is going to secure his sought-after ceasefire.

Putin has repeatedly brushed aside Trump’s bid for a quick halt to the war. During his annual news conference in December, he said: “We don’t need a truce — we need peace: long-term, durable, with guarantees for the Russian Federation and its citizens.”

That’s been echoed by top officials and others close to the Kremlin.

“Putin will not accept ceasefire as Russia many times clearly said before” without discussion of long-term peace, Alexander Dugin, a political scientist in Moscow who advocates a “Russian World” ideology to justify Kremlin expansion said on the X social media platform. “Trump this time is wrong.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Moscow wouldn’t accept the presence of NATO troops in any capacity in Ukraine, including as peacekeepers. Lavrov’s comments during an interview with U.S. bloggers published on Wednesday underscored the wide gap that remains on key points for negotiations to permanently settle the conflict.

Trump has repeatedly said he believes Putin wants peace. Washington could potentially offer the Russian leader a summit meeting with Trump in exchange for signing onto the accord, bringing the Kremlin in from the cold after former President Joe Biden’s administration eschewed most contact with their counterparts in Moscow.

Western security officials say that Putin has been deliberately making maximalist demands because he knows they will be unacceptable to Ukraine and Europe, and that he’s ready to continue fighting, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday. Meanwhile, defense ministers from European military powers France, Italy, Poland, the U.K. and Germany, were set to gather in Paris on Wednesday to coordinate on support for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s agreement on truce terms brings Kyiv back into Trump’s good graces after a disastrous Oval Office meeting that descended into a shouting match between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Washington later suspended military aid and intelligence sharing for Kyiv.

U.S. transit of military aid destined for Ukraine resumed after the agreement on ceasefire terms, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Wednesday. Washington said it would lift its freeze on aid and intelligence-sharing as part of the deal.

In a video address to Ukrainians, Zelenskyy said that “Ukraine is ready for peace” and “Russia must show whether it is ready to end the war or whether it continues the war.”