JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Ukraine said it would support a Trump administration proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia, an announcement that followed hours of meetings Tuesday in Saudi Arabia where the United States agreed to immediately lift a pause on intelligence sharing with Ukraine and resume military assistance to the nation.
The talks in the coastal city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, brought new momentum to ceasefire negotiations that had faltered after a public confrontation at the White House between the Ukrainian and U.S. presidents.
The Trump administration had suspended all military aid and intelligence sharing in the aftermath of that combative meeting in Washington.
The announcements Tuesday, in a joint statement, came hours after Russian officials said Ukrainian drones had targeted Moscow in the largest attack of the war on the Russian capital.
In the statement, the United States and Ukraine acknowledged that the terms of any ceasefire would be subject to Russia’s approval. There was no immediate comment on the ceasefire discussion from Moscow, which had no officials at the talks.
“Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire” if Russia did the same, the statement said. It added: “The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace.”
At the conclusion of the meetings, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agreement now puts the pressure on Russia to end the war.
“We’ll take this offer now to the Russians, and we hope that they’ll say yes, that they’ll say yes to peace,” Rubio said. “The ball is now in their court.”
The United States has been pursuing talks separately with Russia and Ukraine. There has been no public indication that Russia would accept an unconditional, monthlong ceasefire. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that he will demand concessions — such as ruling out membership in NATO for Ukraine — before agreeing to any halt in the war, which began in 2022 with the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has killed or wounded more than 1 million soldiers on both sides.
During his annual news conference in December, Putin suggested that a ceasefire would give Ukrainian forces an opportunity to replenish and train their personnel. “We do not need a truce,” he said. “We need peace, a long-term and lasting peace.”
Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump told reporters that he thought he would speak with Putin this week and that he hoped a lasting ceasefire would be negotiated in the coming days.
The joint statement Tuesday said the United States and Ukraine had also agreed to conclude “as soon as possible” a deal to develop Ukraine’s oil, natural gas and mineral resources — an agreement that was put on hold after the Oval Office clash. That deal is intended to “expand Ukraine’s economy and guarantee Ukraine’s long-term prosperity and security,” the statement said.
It added that the United States and Ukraine also discussed humanitarian relief efforts that would take place during a ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners of war.
“Representatives of both nations praised the bravery of the Ukrainian people in defense of their nation and agreed that now is the time to begin a process toward lasting peace,” the statement said.
The U.S. delegation in Jeddah was led by Rubio and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser. They met with a delegation from Ukraine led by Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff; Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha; and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
Before the talks, Ukraine had insisted that any ceasefire include security guarantees, but there was no indication from the statement issued Tuesday that any such guarantees would be provided before any interim ceasefire takes effect.
Waltz told reporters, however, that security guarantees had been part of the conversations in Jeddah.
“We also got into substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end, what type of guarantees they’re going to have for their long term security and prosperity,” Waltz said.
The intelligence cutoff had already impaired Ukrainian soldiers in combat, particularly in the Kursk region of Russia, where Russian troops have been rapidly retaking territory seized by Ukraine last summer, according to Ukrainian commanders in the field.
The Russian military said Tuesday it had retaken 12 settlements from Ukraine in Kursk.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington research institute, said that “the temporal correlation” between the suspension of U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine and the Russian advances in Kursk was “noteworthy.”
It was unclear from the joint statement whether the ceasefire would cover this pocket of land that Ukraine captured in Kursk.
During the confrontational White House meeting between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, which unraveled into an argument and insults, Trump told Zelenskyy at one point: “You’ve talked enough. You won’t win.”
He added at the end of the televised confrontation, “This is going to be great television.”
The fallout has reverberated ever since, prompting Ukraine’s European allies to pledge further support. On Tuesday, Rubio suggested that it was time to move on from the White House clash.
“What’s back on track here, hopefully, is peace,” Rubio said. “This is not ‘Mean Girls.’ This is not some episode of some television show.”
Yermak, the lead Ukrainian negotiator, thanked the United States for “constructive” talks.
“A just peace is the most important for us,” he wrote on social media. “We want a lasting peace.”
In his nightly video address to Ukrainians, Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian delegation had entered the talks Tuesday with an offer for a partial truce, covering only aerial bombardments and combat on the Black Sea.
The U.S. delegation, he said, had proposed the comprehensive ceasefire. Zelenskyy said an “important element” in the talks was the U.S. commitment to resume military and intelligence assistance, though he did not directly tie the issue to acceptance of a ceasefire.
Ukraine’s military adviser to the talks, Col. Pavlo Palisa, in a statement posted on Facebook, suggested that the offer to resume U.S. military and intelligence assistance had led to the acceptance of the ceasefire.
It was a suggestion, though not stated directly, that Trump’s strong-arm negotiating tactic of revoking aid had played a role in achieving the agreement. “We are ready for a full ceasefire,” Palisa wrote, “and in return the United States agrees to resume security assistance and intelligence sharing.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the statement Tuesday “an important moment for peace in Ukraine” and said he would convene leaders this weekend to discuss next steps.
“I warmly welcome the agreement today in Jeddah and congratulate President Trump and President Zelenskyy for this remarkable breakthrough,” Starmer said, adding that “Russia must now agree to a ceasefire and an end to the fighting, too.”
The war in Ukraine has been raging along nearly 700 miles of trenches cut through fields, forests and towns in the country’s east. Longer-range weapons such as howitzers and exploding drones have rendered all movement within 10 miles or so of the front lethally dangerous.
The communiqué offered no detail on how a ceasefire could be carried out; past agreements to halt fighting since Russia first intervened militarily in Ukraine in 2014 have proved devilishly complicated.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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