# Putin says U.S. ceasefire proposal depends on Russian conditions
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was in favor of a U.S.-backed proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, but only if the terms addressed what Moscow calls the conflict's root causes and met Russia's own conditions.
In the Euronews report supplied in the packet, Putin presented himself as open to the idea of a pause in fighting while making clear that he was not endorsing an unconditional ceasefire. He said any agreement would need to produce what Moscow described as an enduring peace, and he tied that to long-standing Russian demands about Ukraine's military posture and political alignment.
Putin raised several objections. He asked whether Ukraine would continue mobilising troops during the 30-day period, whether weapons would still be supplied, and whether newly mobilised units would be trained during the truce. He also said Moscow would want guarantees that Kyiv would not receive military support while the ceasefire was in force.
The Russian leader further pointed to the situation in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a cross-border incursion in August 2024. He questioned what would happen to Ukrainian forces there if hostilities stopped, implying that Russia would not simply allow them to withdraw. The report says Russian forces had recently retaken a significant portion of the territory, including the town of Sudzha.
The packet places Putin's remarks against the backdrop of U.S. diplomacy. Ukraine had already agreed to the month-long ceasefire proposal in talks in Jeddah, provided Russia also accepted it. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would take the plan to Moscow and that the ball was in Russia's court. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow on the same day and expected to meet Putin.
That gives the Russian statement a double meaning. On one hand, it does not reject the ceasefire outright. On the other hand, it shifts the burden back to Washington and Kyiv by insisting that a pause is acceptable only if the ceasefire becomes part of a larger settlement on Russian terms.
The wording also matters because it echoes the Kremlin's long-standing list of demands from the opening phase of the war: Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarisation, and an end to foreign military backing. Euronews notes that these are the same pretexts Putin used before the full-scale invasion in 2022.
For now, the key takeaway from the packet is that Putin did not say no to the U.S. proposal, but he did not say yes in any practical sense either. He reframed the offer as a negotiation over Russia's political and security demands, keeping the ceasefire process alive while ensuring that any real progress would be difficult.
