After Ukraine agreed to a US proposal for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in its conflict with Russia, Vladimir Putin on Wednesday donned military fatigues and visited a command post to hear that Moscow was close to retaking the entire region of Kursk.
Speaking a day later alongside Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko — who brokered two failed processes to end Putin’s initial invasion of Ukraine a decade ago — the Russian president said any ceasefire would simply let Kyiv’s forces regroup just as Moscow is close to driving them out of Kursk.
The message from Putin was clear: with its forces advancing across the almost 2,000km frontline, Russia has little reason to stop fighting unless it achieves its goals through other means.
What qualified support Putin has given for Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal belies a set of maximalist demands that remain essentially unchanged since the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
As Trump pushes for a quick end to the war, Putin’s challenge is to exploit Russia’s battlefield advantage to its fullest while keeping the US placated and satisfied that a rapprochement with the US president remains on track.
“There’s nothing Trump could plausibly offer that would make Russia give up on its objectives in Ukraine. But if you don’t have to say ‘absolutely not’ when there might be consequences for doing so, why would you?” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation.
“For the Russians, the leverage is to keep the fighting ongoing while they’re talking. That’s why they’re going to want to tie any discussion of a cessation of hostilities with a broader political process,” Charap added.
The recent brief suspension of US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine, lifted after Kyiv agreed to Trump’s ceasefire this week, has materially helped Russia at what was already arguably its strongest point of this war.
The advances in the Kursk region, where Ukraine seized more than 1,000 sq km from Russia last summer, appear to have particularly emboldened the Russian president.
Speaking with Lukashenko, Putin indicated that Russia would demand that Ukraine end forced mobilisation and surrender the entirety of Kursk, including the parts Russia has still been unable to retake.
He claimed that the remaining Ukrainian contingent in Kursk was almost surrounded and would soon face a choice between “surrendering or dying”.
Kyiv’s forces are retreating from the front lines in Kursk but still control a small patch of land between the Russian town of Sudzha and the Ukrainian border.
Nevertheless, Trump on Friday appeared to endorse Putin’s claims of Ukraine’s predicament in the area.
“AT THIS VERY MOMENT, THOUSANDS OF UKRAINIAN TROOPS ARE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED BY THE RUSSIAN MILITARY, AND IN A VERY BAD AND VULNERABLE POSITION,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared.”
Trump added that US discussions with the Russian president the previous day had been “very good and productive”.
The Kremlin expects the west to stop supplying Kyiv with arms and training its troops, while warning any workable ceasefire mechanism would take time to develop — not least because Russia’s forces are on the attack.
Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said that for Putin the 30-day ceasefire “looks like a trap”.
“There’s a chance Russia could drive Ukraine into a corner on the battlefield to the point where they’d have to make some uncomfortable decisions,” he said. “Russia knows Trump wants a quick peace, but it can’t let Ukraine off the hook.”
He added that during a ceasefire the Ukrainians could make a deal with the Europeans about bringing in peacekeepers. “Russia would face the dilemma of whether to attack them and risk being blamed for breaking the ceasefire, or just to swallow it and let Ukraine strengthen its position.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin’s conditions amounted to a rejection of Trump’s offer without saying as much.
“Of course, Putin is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to continue this war and keep killing Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said. “Putin does this often — he doesn’t say ‘no’ outright, but he drags things out and makes reasonable solutions impossible.”
Putin’s intransigence will test Washington’s willingness to pressure Russia even as it seeks to achieve a historic rapprochement with the Kremlin.
Trump has threatened tougher sanctions if Russia rejects his offer, but the US has also already indicated it would not accept Ukraine into Nato and would require Kyiv to make territorial concessions — two of Putin’s core demands for a broader settlement.
The prospect of reconciliation with the US, however, may give Putin additional incentive to strike a deal. “Russia clearly doesn’t want to return to being seen as the primary obstacle,” Charap said.
The US and Russia have attempted to stay on message even after Putin expressed his clear objections to Trump’s proposal.
Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, indicated on Thursday that, at a minimum, Ukraine would have to surrender the partly occupied Donbas region.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, echoed Waltz in saying there were “grounds for cautious optimism”, adding that Putin gave Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff “information and additional signals”.
Though previous US sanctions have so far failed to shift Putin’s stance on the conflict, the White House could still make waging war more painful for Russia, according to Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political scientist.
US pressure on Russia’s oil exports or global oil prices could reduce Moscow’s budget revenue, forcing the Kremlin to look for alternative funding, he said.
But Trump’s apparent eagerness to make concessions to Russia, in the hope of securing a quick deal, had heightened domestic expectations of victory, even amid widespread war fatigue, analysts at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre wrote in a briefing paper.
Footage of battlefield successes had emboldened pro-war sentiment, while Russia’s splurge on its war economy had created constituencies of industrialists and soldiers with a vested interest in keeping the fighting going, they wrote.
Putin appeared to play to that feeling last week, when the mother of a Russian soldier who died in combat told him Russia “should go to the end [and] not make any concessions”. Putin replied: “We aren’t planning to do that.”
Additional reporting by Anastasia Stognei in Berlin and Fabrice Deprez and Polina Ivanova in Kyiv; cartography by Steven Bernard
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