Putin backs US ceasefire idea for Ukraine but says there's lot to clarify

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia supported a US proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that any truce would have to address the root causes of the conflict and that many crucial details needed to be sorted out.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the sharpest confrontation between Moscow and the West in decades.

Putin's heavily caveated support for the US ceasefire proposal looked designed to signal goodwill to Washington and to open the door to further talks with US President Donald Trump.

Such talks could offer a real chance to end the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two, given Ukraine has already agreed to the proposal.

"We agree with the proposals to cease hostilities," Putin told reporters at a news conference in the Kremlin following talks with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. "The idea itself is correct, and we certainly support it."

"But we proceed from the fact that this cessation should be such that it would lead to long-term peace and would eliminate the original causes of this crisis."

He went on to list a slew of issues he said needed clarifying and thanked Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, for his efforts to end the war which both Moscow and Washington now cast as a deadly proxy war which could have escalated into World War Three.

Trump, who said he was willing to talk to the Russian leader by phone, called Putin's statement "very promising" but said it was not complete and that he hoped Moscow would "do the right thing."

Trump said Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, was engaged in serious talks with the Russians in Moscow around the US proposal.

Ukraine is likely to see Putin's stance as an attempt to buy time while Russian troops squeeze the last Ukrainian troops out of western Russia and Moscow sticks to demands that Kyiv regards as seeking its own capitulation.

The West and Ukraine describe Russia's 2022 invasion as an imperial-style land grab, and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces. Russian forces control nearly a fifth of Ukraine's territory and have been edging forward since mid-2024.

Putin portrays the conflict as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging the NATO military alliance and encroaching on what he considers Moscow's sphere of influence, including Ukraine.

European powers have been deeply concerned that Trump could be turning his back on Europe for some sort of grand bargain with Putin that could include China, oil prices, cooperation in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Putin said Russian forces were moving forward along the entire frontline and that the ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine did not seek to simply use it to regroup.

"How can we and how will we be guaranteed that nothing like this will happen? How will control (of the ceasefire) be organised?" Putin said. "These are all serious questions."

"There are issues that we need to discuss. And I think we need to talk to our American colleagues as well."

Putin said he might call Trump to discuss the issue.

The United States agreed on Tuesday to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said at talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal.

Russia over recent days has pressed a lightning offensive in the western Russian region of Kursk against Ukrainian forces which smashed through the border last August in a bid to divert forces from eastern Ukraine, gain a bargaining chip and embarrass Putin.

Ukraine now has a sliver of less than 200 square km (77 square miles) in Kursk, down from 1,300 square km (500 square miles) at the peak of the incursion last summer, according to the Russian military.

Putin on Wednesday donned a camouflage uniform - extremely rare for the former KGB officer - to visit a command post in the Kursk region.

He said Russia would welcome back western companies if they wanted to return, though he also said that markets had been taken over by domestic producers and that Moscow would not be creating any special conditions for western companies.

"To those (companies) who want to return, we say: Welcome, welcome at any moment," Putin said, using the English word welcome.

Putin added that if Moscow and Washington could agree on energy cooperation, then gas supplies for Europe could resume after Russia lost its primary position as the main supplier to Europe during the war.