Pho­to: A Ukrain­ian sol­dier walks past at a city hall in Sudzha, Kursk re­gion, Rus­sia, Fri­day, Aug. 16, 2024. This im­age was ap­proved by the Ukrain­ian De­fense Min­istry be­fore pub­li­ca­tion. (AP Pho­to, File)

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin said Thurs­day that he agrees in prin­ci­ple with a U.S. pro­pos­al for a 30-day cease­fire in Ukraine, but the terms need to be worked out, and he em­pha­sized that it should pave the way to last­ing peace.

“So the idea it­self is cor­rect, and we cer­tain­ly sup­port it,” Putin told a news con­fer­ence in Moscow. “But there are is­sues that we need to dis­cuss, and I think that we need to dis­cuss it with our Amer­i­can col­leagues and part­ners.”

He not­ed the need to de­vel­op a mech­a­nism to con­trol pos­si­ble breach­es of the truce. An­oth­er is­sue, he said, is whether Ukraine could use the 30-day cease­fire to con­tin­ue mo­bi­liza­tion and rear­ma­ment.

“We agree with the pro­pos­als to halt the fight­ing, but we pro­ceed from the as­sump­tion that the cease­fire should lead to last­ing peace and re­move the root caus­es of the cri­sis,” Putin said.

Putin not­ed that while it ap­peared that the U.S. per­suad­ed Ukraine to ac­cept a cease­fire, Ukraine is in­ter­est­ed in that be­cause of the bat­tle­field sit­u­a­tion, not­ing that Ukrain­ian troops that launched an in­cur­sion in­to Rus­sia’s Kursk re­gion would be ful­ly blocked in the com­ing days.

“In these con­di­tions, I be­lieve it would be good for the Ukrain­ian side to se­cure a cease­fire for at least 30 days,” he said.

Re­fer­ring to the Ukrain­ian troops in Kursk, he said: “Will all those who are there come out with­out a fight?”

Putin thanked U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump “for pay­ing so much at­ten­tion to the set­tle­ment in Ukraine.”

He al­so thanked the lead­ers of Chi­na, In­dia, Brazil and South Africa for their “no­ble mis­sion to end the fight­ing to ca­su­al­ties,” a state­ment that sig­nalled those coun­tries’ po­ten­tial in­volve­ment in a cease­fire deal.

Rus­sia has said it will not ac­cept peace­keep­ers from any NA­TO mem­bers to mon­i­tor a prospec­tive truce.

An en­voy of U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ar­rived Thurs­day in Moscow for talks on an Amer­i­can-pro­posed 30-day cease­fire that Ukraine has ac­cept­ed, but a se­nior Russ­ian of­fi­cial said the truce would on­ly help Kyiv by giv­ing its weary and short­hand­ed mil­i­tary a break.

The diplo­mat­ic ef­fort co­in­cid­ed with a Russ­ian claim that its troops have dri­ven the Ukrain­ian army out of a key town in Rus­sia’s Kursk bor­der re­gion, where Moscow has been try­ing for sev­en months to dis­lodge Ukrain­ian troops from their foothold.

A U.S. of­fi­cial con­firmed the ar­rival of Trump’s spe­cial en­voy, Steve Witkoff. The of­fi­cial spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to com­ment on the mat­ter.

The Russ­ian De­fense Min­istry’s claim that it re­cap­tured the town of Sudzha, a Ukrain­ian op­er­a­tional hub in Kursk, came hours af­ter Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin vis­it­ed his com­man­ders in Kursk. The claim could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied. Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials made no im­me­di­ate com­ment.

The re­newed Russ­ian mil­i­tary push and Putin’s high-pro­file vis­it to his troops un­fold­ed as Trump seeks a diplo­mat­ic end to the war, which be­gan more than three years ago with Rus­sia’s full-scale in­va­sion.

The U.S. on Tues­day lift­ed its March 3 sus­pen­sion of mil­i­tary aid for Kyiv af­ter se­nior U.S. and Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials re­port­ed mak­ing progress on how to stop the fight­ing dur­ing talks in Sau­di Ara­bia.

Trump said Wednes­day that “it’s up to Rus­sia now” as his ad­min­is­tra­tion press­es Moscow to agree to the cease­fire. The U.S. pres­i­dent has made veiled threats to hit Rus­sia with new sanc­tions if it does not en­gage with peace ef­forts.

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov would not com­ment on Moscow’s view of the cease­fire pro­pos­al.

“Be­fore the talks start, and they haven’t start­ed yet, it would be wrong to talk about it in pub­lic,” he told re­porters.

U.S. Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Scott Bessent told CN­BC Thurs­day that Trump is “will­ing to ap­ply max­i­mum pres­sure on both sides,” in­clud­ing sanc­tions that reach the high­est scale on Rus­sia.

Se­nior U.S. of­fi­cials have said they hope to see Rus­sia stop at­tacks on Ukraine with­in the next few days.

Rus­sia com­plains about cease­fire pro­pos­al

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s for­eign pol­i­cy ad­vis­er, com­plained in tele­vised re­marks Thurs­day that a cease­fire would grant a “tem­po­rary break for the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary.”

Speak­ing lat­er to re­porters in the Krem­lin, Putin’s for­eign af­fairs ad­vis­er, Yuri Ushakov, reaf­firmed that the pro­posed cease­fire would “give us noth­ing,” adding that it would “on­ly give the Ukraini­ans a chance to re­group, con­sol­i­date their forces and keep do­ing the same in the fu­ture.”

Ushakov would not com­ment on Witkoff’s talks in Moscow, say­ing that the par­ties agreed to keep them con­fi­den­tial.

He said Rus­sia wants a “long-term peace­ful set­tle­ment that takes in­to ac­count Moscow’s in­ter­ests and con­cerns.” His com­ments echoed state­ments from Putin, who has re­peat­ed­ly said a tem­po­rary cease­fire would ben­e­fit Ukraine and its West­ern al­lies.

Ukraine has lev­elled ac­cu­sa­tions sim­i­lar to Ushakov’s, claim­ing Rus­sia would use a truce to re­group and rearm.

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy chid­ed Rus­sia on the Telegram mes­sag­ing app Thurs­day for what he said was its slow re­sponse to the cease­fire pro­pos­al, ac­cus­ing Moscow of try­ing to de­lay any peace deal. He said that Ukraine is “de­ter­mined to move quick­ly to­ward peace” and hoped U.S. pres­sure would com­pel Rus­sia to stop fight­ing.

The U.S. still has about $3.85 bil­lion in con­gres­sion­al­ly au­tho­rized fund­ing for fu­ture arms ship­ments to Ukraine, but the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has shown no in­ter­est so far in us­ing that au­thor­i­ty to send ad­di­tion­al weapons as it awaits the out­come of peace over­tures.

By sig­nalling its open­ness to a cease­fire at a time when the Russ­ian mil­i­tary has the up­per hand in the war, Ukraine has pre­sent­ed the Krem­lin with a dilem­ma — whether to ac­cept a truce and aban­don hopes of mak­ing new gains, or re­ject the of­fer and risk de­rail­ing a cau­tious rap­proche­ment with Wash­ing­ton.

The Ukrain­ian army’s foothold in­side Rus­sia has been un­der in­tense pres­sure for months from the re­newed ef­fort by Russ­ian forces, backed by North Ko­re­an troops. Ukraine’s dar­ing in­cur­sion last Au­gust led to the first oc­cu­pa­tion of Russ­ian soil by for­eign troops since World War II and em­bar­rassed the Krem­lin.

Putin vis­its Russ­ian mil­i­tary com­man­ders

Speak­ing to com­man­ders Wednes­day, Putin said that he ex­pect­ed the mil­i­tary “to com­plete­ly free the Kursk re­gion from the en­e­my in the near­est fu­ture.”

Wear­ing mil­i­tary fa­tigues, Putin added that “it’s nec­es­sary to think about cre­at­ing a se­cu­ri­ty zone along­side the state bor­der,” in a sig­nal that Moscow could try to ex­pand its ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains by cap­tur­ing parts of Ukraine’s neigh­bour­ing Sumy re­gion. That idea could com­pli­cate a cease­fire deal.

Ukraine launched the raid in a bid to counter the un­ceas­ing­ly grim news from the front line, as well as to draw Russ­ian troops away from the bat­tle­field in­side Ukraine and to gain a bar­gain­ing chip in any peace talks. But the in­cur­sion did not sig­nif­i­cant­ly change the dy­nam­ic of the war.

The In­sti­tute for the Study of War, a Wash­ing­ton-based think tank, as­sessed late Wednes­day that Russ­ian forces were in con­trol of Sudzha, a town close to the bor­der that pre­vi­ous­ly was home to about 5,000 peo­ple.

Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary com­man­der, Gen. Olek­san­dr Syrskyi, said Russ­ian air­craft had car­ried out an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of strikes on Kursk and that as a re­sult Sudzha had been al­most com­plete­ly de­stroyed. He did not com­ment on whether Ukraine still con­trolled the set­tle­ment but said his coun­try was “ma­neu­ver­ing (troops) to more ad­van­ta­geous lines.”

Mean­while, Maj. Gen. Dmytro Kra­syl­nykov, com­man­der of Ukraine’s North­ern Op­er­a­tional Com­mand, which in­cludes the Kursk re­gion, was dis­missed from his post, he told Ukrain­ian me­dia out­let Sus­pilne on Wednes­day. He told the out­let that he was not giv­en a rea­son for his dis­missal, say­ing “I’m guess­ing, but I don’t want to talk about it yet.”

As­so­ci­at­ed Press Writer Aamer Mad­hani in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.