Ukraine said it was ready to accept an immediate 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia, as the US announced it would immediately lift its restrictions on military aid.
Donald Trump said he now hoped Vladimir Putin would reciprocate. If the Russian president did, it would mark the first ceasefire in the more than three years since he launched his full-scale military operation in Ukraine in 2022.
The agreement, announced in a joint statement following talks between senior US and Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, came nearly two weeks after an Oval Office blowup between Trump and the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that led the White House to suspend aid to Ukraine over the objections of its European allies.
“That’s a total ceasefire,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday after the talks. “Ukraine has agreed to it. And hopefully Russia will agree to it.”
US officials said they hoped the agreement would help lead to talks to end the war. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel to Moscow in the coming days to propose the ceasefire to Putin.
Trump continued, “We’re going to meet with them [the Russians] later on today and tomorrow and hopefully we’ll be able to [work] out a deal. I think the ceasefire is very important. If we can get Russia to do it, that’ll be great. If we can’t we just keep going on and people are gonna get killed, lots of people.”
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said the ball was “now in Russia’s court” after the negotiations concluded. “If they [Russia] say no then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here,” he said, The Guardian reported.
Source: Mehr News Agency
