Putin aide pushes back against Ukraine truce before US talks

Bloomberg News on Mar 13, 2025

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A top aide to President Vladimir Putin said Russia wanted a long-term solution and not a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine as U.S. officials arrived in Moscow for talks.

The comments from Yuri Ushakov reported by the Interfax news agency on Thursday came as Russia said it expelled Ukrainian troops from a key town in the Kursk region, bringing Putin closer to his goal of completely dislodging Kyiv’s forces from his country.

Russian troops retook Sudzha, a border town that has a crucial gas transportation hub nearby, the Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday on Telegram. Russian state media on Wednesday broadcast footage of troops raising flags in two locations in the town center.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s military staff declined to comment.

U.S. officials landed in Moscow on Thursday to persuade Putin to sign a 30-day ceasefire that delegations from Washington and Kyiv agreed upon in Jeddah earlier this week.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed meetings with U.S. negotiators were expected later on Thursday, and said Putin was scheduled to hold an international phone conversation in the evening, but didn’t specify with whom, Interfax reported.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier told Fox News that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff was “making his way to Moscow this week” to discuss the truce. It will be Witkoff’s second trip to Moscow in about a month.

Moscow’s military has pushed the Ukrainian army back from more than 86% of the area they held in Kursk after a surprise incursion in August, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff said late Wednesday during an unexpected visit by Putin to the region. He added that some units had crossed the state border and entered Ukraine’s Sumy region. His claim couldn’t be independently verified.

The complete expulsion of Ukrainian forces would deal a blow to Kyiv, which had hoped to use Russian territory it captured in the first occupation of Russian lands by a foreign military since WWII as a potential bargaining chip in the peace talks sought by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In a show of determination, Putin visited his troops in Kursk region on Wednesday. Wearing military fatigues, he met with high-ranking officers and called for “completely defeating the enemy that entrenched in the Kursk region as soon as possible,” according to state-run Rossiya 24 TV.

Ukraine’s border service confirmed on Wednesday that Russians are attacking the Sumy region, which shares a border with Kursk.

“Ukraine will continue to keep up the defense of the Kursk region for as long as is necessary and expedient,” Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said late Wednesday. However, in order to save soldiers’ lives, “defense force units, if necessary, are maneuvering to more advantageous positions.”

The area under Ukrainian control in Kursk has shrunk significantly since early February, based on data from the DeepState open-source map service. Until recently, Moscow’s military had struggled to dislodge Kyiv’s forces for more than seven months, despite deploying additional soldiers from North Korea.

The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region was a shock for Russians, bringing home the consequences of the war Putin started in February 2022. Days after Ukraine’s troops crossed the border, Putin told defense officials their “main objective” was to repel the invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Kyiv’s operations in Kursk helped to prevent a potential Russian incursion into Ukraine’s neighboring Sumy region.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s longtime ally who provided his country’s territory as a launchpad for Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, arrived in Moscow on Thursday ahead of Witkoff’s visit. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the two visits were coordinated.

Peskov said that Ushakov and his American counterpart, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, had spoken by phone on Wednesday, according to Interfax.

Putin will probably agree to eventual truce terms with Ukraine but wants his own conditions met beforehand, likely dragging out the negotiations, according to a person familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking. To achieve that, he’ll try to stretch out the timeline for agreeing to any halt to fighting in Ukraine, other people with knowledge of the situation said.

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With assistance from Kateryna Chursina and Volodymyr Verbianyi.