With Ukraine signed as much as US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, the strain is now on the Kremlin to determine whether or not it too will settle for President Donald Trump’s plan to convey the Ukraine struggle to a halt, albeit a short lived one.
Russian officers are hinting at contacts with US representatives “within the subsequent few days” however haven’t mentioned whether or not the phrases of the ceasefire, as set out on the US-Ukrainian talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, could be acceptable.
For Moscow, it is a second of reality and one which can require awkward compromises whether it is critical about peace.
The Kremlin has lengthy claimed to be open to negotiations to finish the battle, whereas insisting it should obtain its bold struggle goals, akin to securing management over all annexed areas of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talks with US President Donald Trump and US Vice President JD Vance within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, DC, on February 28. – Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Solely final week, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin strongman who launched this brutal struggle three years in the past, vowed to a gaggle of tearful widows and moms of killed Russian troopers that Moscow would by no means “give in”.
Professional-war Russian hardliners, at instances inspired by the Kremlin, might even see a ceasefire as a betrayal.
However a climbdown of some kind could also be inevitable.
Even when Russian negotiators can impose their very own situations on the ceasefire – a Ukrainian withdrawal from Kursk, for instance, the small pocket of Russia captured by Ukraine, the place combating is now raging – it’s laborious to think about its larger territorial calls for, but alone the objective of eradicating NATO from its western flank, could be met.
This will likely additionally grow to be a decisive crossroads in Putin’s oddly heat relationship with Trump who, in trade for current concessions and reward, could now count on the Kremlin chief to play ball.
Certainly, “the ball is now of their court docket,” is exactly what the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned of the Russians after his talks with Ukrainian officers concluded in Jeddah.
Simply days in the past, Trump claimed the Russians had “all of the playing cards.” Now, deliberately or not, he could have referred to as Putin’s bluff.
For extra CNN information and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
Source link