Trump and Putin to discuss proposed Ukraine ceasefire this week

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accepted the plan but Russia has yet to commit to the truce.

US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are expected to speak this week, special envoy Steve Witkoff said, as Russia has yet to agree to a US-brokered ceasefire proposal with Ukraine.

“The two presidents are going to have a really good and positive discussion this week,” Witkoff said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

Earlier, Moscow said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. The pair discussed “concrete aspects of the implementation of understandings” at a US-Russia summit in Saudi Arabia last month.

The February Riyadh gathering was the first high-level meeting between the United States and Russia since Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.

“Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio agreed to remain in contact,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, with no mention of the US-suggested ceasefire.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said Saturday that the pair had “discussed the next steps” on Ukraine. She also said Rubio and Lavrov “agreed to continue working towards restoring communication between the United States and Russia”.

The exchanges come as Washington this week pushed forward a 30-day immediate ceasefire proposal following talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accepted the plan, Putin has yet to commit to the ceasefire. Despite saying he agrees in principle to it, he noted there are “serious questions” for Russia to be addressed.

Zelenskyy accused the Kremlin of not wanting to end the war and warned that Moscow wanted to first “improve their situation on the battlefield” before agreeing to any ceasefire.

Zelenskyy says Putin ‘lying’

In his reaction to the ceasefire earlier this week, Putin said the initiative would benefit primarily Ukraine and not Russian forces, who he said are “advancing” in many areas.

The proposal came as Russia, which occupies swaths of southern and eastern Ukraine, has had momentum in some areas of the front.

It has removed Ukrainian forces from parts of its Kursk region, where Kyiv hopes to hold onto Russian territory as a potential leverage in future negotiations.

Putin said he wanted to discuss Moscow’s concerns with Trump in a phone call.

Zelenskyy said that by not agreeing to the ceasefire, Putin was also going against Trump – who has made overtures towards Russia – and accused Moscow of trying to find ways not to end the war. He accused Putin of “lying about how a ceasefire is supposedly too complicated”.

Ukraine said Sunday that one person was killed by a Russian drone attack on the city of Izyum, in the Kharkiv region, which fell to Russia at the start of its Ukraine invasion before being retaken by Kyiv’s forces.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies