It’s a confusing time for American diplomacy. After yesterday’s meeting in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. appeared on Tuesday to be back in Ukraine’s corner — and calling on Russia to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in the war it started more than three years ago. It remained entirely unclear on Wednesday, however, whether Vladimir Putin might agree to a temporary ceasefire. His forces currently have the momentum on the battlefield but, like Ukraine, Russia is thought to have suffered hundreds of thousands of military casualties.
“We’re going to tell (the Russians) this is what’s on the table. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking, and now it’ll be up to them to say yes or no,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters after the meeting in Jeddah. “If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here… The ball’s now in their court.”
Russia hedges, but notes battlefield “dynamics are good” for Putin
The Kremlin said Wednesday that it needed more details on the proposal and time to consider it. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow assumed that Rubio, who led the U.S. delegation at the talks with Ukraine on Tuesday, would be briefing Russian counterparts “on the details of the negotiations in Saudi Arabia,” but that before such information was shared, “Russia does not want to get ahead of itself on the issue of the proposed truce.”
“Contacts are planned in the coming days,” Peskov said.
Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, is expected to head to Russia for talks later this week. Peskov indicated those talks could lead to another telephone conversation between Putin and Mr. Trump. He said there were no concrete plans for such a conversation yet, but “if necessary, [it] can be organized very quickly.”
The Kremlin spokesman hinted, however, that Russia’s bargaining position in any looming ceasefire talks was only getting stronger with every passing day. Putin’s forces have continued a slow but steady advance in recent weeks, retaking ground in Russia‘s western border region of Kursk, where Ukrainian forces staged a shock incursion last year.
“The Kremlin is closely monitoring information from the military in the Kursk region,” Peskov said. “The data shows that Russian forces are advancing successfully, the dynamics are good.”
Russia’s military said Wednesday that forces had retaken five more small villages in Kursk from Ukrainian troops. Russia also unleashed a fresh rocket attack on Ukraine overnight, with the State Emergency Service reporting strikes on Zelenskyy’s heavily bombarded hometown of Kryvyi Rih. The service said apartment buildings, administrative buildings, a shop, an educational institution, buses and other vehicles were damaged in the strikes, and it accused Russia of then shelling rescuers who had responded. Local media reports said at least nine people were wounded and one woman, a passerby, was killed.
The White House’s shifting Ukraine policy
The White House’s shift after the meeting in Saudi Arabia — clearly putting the onus back on Moscow to end the war that Putin launched more than three years ago — was the second dramatic turn by the Trump administration in less than a month as it steers America’s policy on Ukraine. It stood in stark contrast to the meeting Zelenskyy had just weeks ago in Washington, when Mr. Trump called the elected Ukrainian president “a dictator,” said he didn’t “have the cards right now” to negotiate the terms of a truce, and then publicly berated him in the Oval Office.
Mr. Trump then ordered the suspension of U.S. security assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine — both of which are crucial to the country standing any chance of holding Russia’s advancing forces at bay.
The pause was lifted Tuesday upon news of the agreement between Washington and Kyiv on a framework for a 30-day ceasefire, immediately unblocking a consignment of weapons already promised to Kyiv — roughly $3.8 billion worth of air defense systems, HIMARS rockets, artillery and support for Ukraine’s F-16 fighter jets.
In Poland, a U.S. NATO ally that shares a long border with western Ukraine and has staunchly supported Zelenskyy throughout the war, Prime Minister Donald Tusk lauded the “important step towards peace,” as the country’s defense ministry confirmed the transfer of U.S.-supplied weapons had resumed across the Polish border.
French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, both of whom have indicated a willingness to send peacekeeping forces to Ukraine as part of any eventual truce deal, both hailed the progress in Jeddah, with Starmer calling it a “remarkable breakthrough,” while Macron cautioned that Kyiv would still need “robust” security guarantees as part of a ceasefire, to ward off any future Russian aggression.
Rubio, speaking to reporters Wednesday, appeared to add further nuance to the White House’s stance on the position of Ukraine and its neighbors, saying European nations would “have to be involved” in reaching a ceasefire, and framing the ongoing discussions as being “about deterrence for Ukraine against future aggression.”
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Mr. Trump and other senior U.S. officials have for weeks played down the importance of security guarantees for Ukraine — and completely ruled out any suggestion of U.S. boots on the ground. They have insisted that a new economic deal between Kyiv and Washington, aimed at granting U.S. access to Ukraine’s reserves of highly-sought after mineral resources, would bring American investment that would effectively deter Russia, without a clear U.S. military commitment.
Rubio said Wednesday, according to the Reuters news agency, that he would not frame a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal as a deterrent to Russia.
“There’s different ways to construct a deterrent on the ground that prevents another war from starting in the future,” Rubio said, stressing that the Trump administration wasn’t approaching the concept of security guarantees “with any sort of preconceived notion.”
“The bottom line,” he said, “is it needs to be something that makes Ukraine feel as if they can deter and prevent a future invasion.”
During the first three years of war, the U.S. government committed well over $100 billion to support Ukraine, helping defend a young democracy against Russia’s aggression.
That cause has drawn many volunteers from around the world to help train and fight alongside Ukraine’s forces, including Americans who’ve come as private citizens, risking their own personal safety. CBS News has met Americans helping train Ukrainian soldiers and evacuating civilians from front-line areas.
It’s believed that hundreds of American volunteers, many of them U.S. veterans, have signed up to serve with Ukraine’s army. For some of them, the U.S. administration’s recent actions and rhetoric — particularly remarks by Mr. Trump that echoed Kremlin talking points, suggesting the war is Kyiv’s fault and that Zelenskyy is an illegitimate leader — have not sat well.
One American fighting for Ukraine’s survival posted a video on social media after that explosive meeting at the White House, describing it in no uncertain terms as “basically Russian propaganda out of the mouth of an American president.”
“It’s shameful,” said the man, who identified himself in the video as “Nasty,” an American volunteer fighting with a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard in the Kharkiv region. “I voted for that man two times. I’ve always been a diehard Trump supporter, to the point of losing friends over standing up for that man and what he says on TV. But last night he crossed a line.”
contributed to this report.
