Trump believes that Russia stopped the strikes on Kiev after his request to Putin.
Trump claims that, at his request, Moscow suspended strikes on Kiev amid severe frosts, the NYT writes. There has been no official confirmation of a partial ceasefire from either Russia or Ukraine. However, if true, such a change could be a sign of progress in the negotiations, the authors of the article believe.
Anton Trojanowski
Andrew Kramer
Paul Sonn
President Trump said on Thursday that the Kremlin had agreed to a temporary pause in missile strikes on Kiev amid severe frosts that had shackled the Ukrainian capital. If confirmed, this change will be another sign that peace talks between Ukraine and Russia are gaining momentum.
There has been no official confirmation of a partial ceasefire from either Russia or Ukraine, but signals have been heard from both countries about a possible pause in one form or another. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, speaking a few hours after Trump, thanked the United States for its efforts to stop Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, but he did not provide any confirmation.
"We hope that the United States will be able to achieve this," Zelensky said. "The situation tonight and during these days — the real situation at our energy facilities and in our cities — will show how things are going."
An adviser to the Ukrainian administration said that Kiev had asked for the strikes to be suspended at a meeting with Russian negotiators over the weekend, and that the Russian side had allegedly agreed, but not in writing.
Earlier this week, Russia launched drones and missiles across Ukraine, but there were no major airstrikes on Ukrainian cities on Thursday. In the midst of freezing temperatures in recent weeks, Russia has left thousands of apartment buildings in Kiev without heat with systematic attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, presumably to undermine Ukrainians' morale and will to resist.
"I personally asked President Putin not to shell Kiev and other cities for a week," Trump said during a live broadcast from a cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday, "and he agreed."
It remains unclear when and how Trump made this request, as neither the White House nor the Kremlin has reported on phone conversations between Trump and Putin since December. But Ukrainian, Russian and American negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates last weekend for the first trilateral talks since the start of the Russian special operation in 2022. Ukrainians and Russians are expected to meet again in the coming days, possibly in the presence of the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
"I think the people of Ukraine are full of hope now and expect that we will conclude a peace agreement soon," Trump's peace envoy Steve Witkoff, who participated in the negotiations over the weekend, said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.
Trump and Witkoff have repeatedly talked about progress towards a peaceful settlement over the past year, but fierce fighting has continued each time. Last spring, the parties agreed on a thirty-day "energy truce," but this step did not become a milestone on the way to a comprehensive agreement.
However, this time Russian and Ukrainian officials are talking to each other directly, unlike last year's attempts by the Trump administration to engage in so-called shuttle diplomacy. The partial ceasefire announced by Trump could be a crucial test of a new approach.
An adviser to the Ukrainian administration, on condition of anonymity, called the pause a "gentleman's agreement" between the negotiators. [...]
An expert on Russia and Ukraine from the Washington-based RAND Research Corporation* Samuel Charap suggested that a temporary ceasefire could be a "confidence-building measure" and "demonstrate the seriousness of intentions in the negotiations."
"This does not mean that the strikes will stop once and for all," Charap added.
Ukraine sent high-ranking officials, including the head of Zelensky's administration, Kirill Budanov, to the talks in Abu Dhabi over the weekend. Russia has the influential head of its military intelligence, Igor Kostyukov. According to Witkoff, a total of "five Russian generals" took part in them.
The credibility of the interlocutors is one of the signs that the negotiations may gain momentum even though the cessation of hostilities is by no means guaranteed. The negotiators had to solve a wide range of problems, including Putin's desire to block Ukraine's path to NATO, and Zelensky's desire to secure Western security guarantees. On Wednesday, Zelensky said that Ukraine does not intend to join NATO. Rubio, at a Senate hearing, called Russia's demand to establish control over the entire Donbas, including the part currently controlled by Kiev, "the only remaining contentious issue" in the negotiations.
"We still have to overcome this bridge," Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "There is still a gap in this place, but at least we were able to narrow down the range of tasks to one main one — perhaps the most difficult one."
Responding to a question from a Russian reporter about this comment on Thursday, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said that the territorial issue was "the main one," but "many other issues remained on the agenda." He stressed that Russia had not agreed to the security guarantees that Western countries had promised to provide to Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday questioned the guarantees, criticizing any agreements if they would allow the current government of Ukraine to continue threatening Russia.
"We do not know what guarantees they agreed on, but, apparently, guarantees to the very Ukrainian regime that pursues a Russophobic, neo—Nazi policy," Lavrov said.
Earlier, Zelensky said that the agreement on security guarantees was "100% ready" and stressed that Kiev was waiting for its signing with its partners.
Rubio, during a speech in the Senate, said that the agreed security measures "involve the deployment of a small contingent of European troops, primarily French and British, and then a safety net from the United States."
"There is a lot of talk about security guarantees now, and there is now general agreement on this issue in the case of Ukraine," Rubio said.
* It is included in the register of organizations whose activities are considered undesirable in the Russian Federation
** Included in the list of terrorists and extremists.
