For the first time since US President Donald Trump started his second term in January and launched a push to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is Moscow -- not Kyiv -- that is under greater pressure from the United States to show that it is committed to seeking peace.
US officials were headed to Moscow on March 12, Trump said, after Ukraine agreed to a US plan for an immediate, extendable 30-day cease-fire at a meeting in Saudi Arabia a day earlier. Will Russia accept the proposal?
A flat-out “nyet” is a possibility, but it’s far from a foregone conclusion.
“[W]hile the smart money is clearly on Russia declining the offer of a cease-fire, I wouldn't be so quick to rule it out entirely,” Russia analyst Sam Greene wrote in a blog post. “Depending on how Moscow sees the trajectory of European policy, it may come to the conclusion that a ceasefire is in its interests.”
Here are three possibilities.
Outright Rejection
If Russia’s actions follow its public words, rejection is the most likely scenario by a long shot. Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly said that what Moscow wants is not a cease-fire but a comprehensive peace deal that addresses what it claims to see as the “root causes” of the war.
Putin launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022 in a bid to subjugate Ukraine, and those remarks suggest Russia might not be prepared to stop fighting unless and until there’s a deal in place that would tick the Kremlin’s boxes -- providing, among other things, for Ukrainian neutrality, a shrunken Ukrainian military, and a change of government in Kyiv, or at least a clear pathway to the departure of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russia also wants a deal that goes beyond Ukraine, reducing NATO’s clout in Eastern Europe and handing Moscow greater influence in security decisions affecting the entire continent -- goals that are far outside the bounds of a temporary truce. And with Russian forces slowly but persistently gaining ground in eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv’s forces on the retreat in Russia’s Kursk region, Putin may see little reason to cease fire now.
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s upper [parliament chamber, alluded unsubtly to this on March 12, saying Washington should understand that “real agreements are still being written…on the front line.”
Additionally, an outright rejection would please pro-war Russian bloggers -- not to mention hawkish members of Putin’s circle --who would be likely to see agreeing to the cease-fire proposal as caving by the Kremlin.
Unconditional Acceptance
Those factors indicate that unconditional Russian acceptance of the cease-fire proposal is highly unlikely. Another factor: If it is considering accepting a temporary truce, the Kremlin may want to put its stamp on the deal.
"Any agreements…will be on our terms, not American [terms]," Kosachev wrote on Telegram.
'Yes, But…'
While unconditional acceptance seems out of the question, Russia “may come to the conclusion that a cease-fire is in its interests,” Greene, a professor at the King's Russia Institute and director of democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis, wrote in a blog post. He suggested that Putin could take the bait if he sees it as a good way to get closer to his goals.
“Moscow’s overriding objective is dominion over Ukraine. In the absence of an opportunity to achieve that on the battlefield, Russia may be happy -- temporarily or otherwise -- to exercise control through the threat of renewed aggression,” he wrote. “A cease-fire may allow Russia the degree of control over Ukraine it seeks, provided the terms do not create genuine deterrence against renewed aggression.”
Rumblings about deployment of a European force in Ukraine could figure into Moscow’s calculus, Greene wrote: “If Moscow thinks Europe is serious about boots on the ground, it might move for a cease-fire before Europe can get organized -- and then make the absence of troops the condition for maintaining the cease-fire.”
Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert and an honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, suggested that Putin faces a difficult choice.
“The hawks are already claiming that this would mean squandering Russia’s current momentum” on the battlefield,” he wrote in The Spectator. “At the same time, to refuse would be to waste the extraordinary opportunity Trump has given them to consolidate their gains, with a fifth of Ukraine in their hands, and at least partly normalize relations with the US.”
Putin may calculate that agreeing to a cease-fire could help reduce Western sanctions against Russia, Galeotti wrote, and he also might worry that rejecting it, on the contrary, could prompt Trump to take a substantially tougher position toward Moscow. On March 12, Trump said the United States could impose additional sanctions on Russia if it is recalcitrant, but added, “I hope we won’t need to.”
Like other analysts, though, Galeotti predicted that Moscow will place conditions on any cease-fire agreement, such as a Ukrainian withdrawal from Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv’s forces have held territory since a surprise invasion last August that has embarrassed Putin.
“It may be that Putin will try to square the circle by agreeing to the cease-fire on condition that Ukraine’s forces in the Kursk salient, already being pushed back, withdraw fully from Russian territory,” he wrote.
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, said that another possible condition could be the suspension of Western military aid to Kyiv during the cease-fire.
“Russia’s answer to the cease-fire proposal might be not “No” but “Yes, but,” Markov wrote on Telegram. “That is, agree to the proposal for a 30-day truce on condition that an embargo on supplies of weapons to Ukraine is in place for that whole period.”
On March 12, Trump reiterated his hopes for swift progress on ending the war, saying, “We don't want to waste time, people are dying.”
But a definitive Russian response to the cease-fire proposal may not come as soon as the United States and Ukraine would like.
“Putin is likely to try to drag out the timeline for agreeing to any halt to fighting in Ukraine to make sure the most favorable terms possible are secured for Moscow,” Bloomberg News reported on March 12, citing what it said were several people with knowledge of the situation.
“The Kremlin has given no indication that it is interested in a cease-fire, and indeed plenty of indication that it is not,” Greene wrote on X. “While all that may be bluster, they are likely to try to make Washington squirm, both on the speed and the contours of a deal.”
