The Kremlin said Wednesday that it was waiting for U.S. officials to provide details on a proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine after talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia the day before.
“We expect, as was said yesterday in Jeddah, Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Adviser Waltz to inform us through various channels about the details of the negotiations and the understanding reached in the coming days,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said officials in Moscow were “closely examining” the joint U.S.-Ukrainian statement on the proposed ceasefire, which also called for an “exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.”
On Tuesday, Rubio said the ceasefire proposal would be presented to Russia after Ukraine agreed to the plan and immediate peace negotiations with Moscow.
“The ball is now in [the Russians’] court,” Rubio said following the talks in Jeddah, which lasted nearly 10 hours. At the end of the meeting, the U.S. resumed military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, saying the move was in response to Kyiv’s endorsement of the ceasefire deal.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he plans to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the proposed 30-day ceasefire as soon as this week.
Peskov said Wednesday that a time and location for Trump’s possible in-person meeting with Putin have not yet been established.
Reuters quoted a senior Russian source as saying that it would be “difficult for Putin to agree to [the ceasefire] in its current form” given the Russian military’s recent successes on the battlefield. “Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing,” the source said.
Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, according to Axios. Earlier, Peskov said the public would be “informed in due course” about a possible visit by Witkoff.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on Wednesday that the United States now needed to persuade Russia to accept the ceasefire proposal.
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