UKRAINE SET TO LOSE FOOTHOLD IN RUSSIA’S KURSK REGION
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West in six decades.
Ukrainian troops appeared on the point of losing their hard-won foothold inside Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday as Moscow claimed further advances there and military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv’s forces were withdrawing.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that he is ready to talk about an end to the war and Trump says he thinks Putin is serious, though other Western leaders disagree.
Trump said on Tuesday that he hoped Russia would agree to a ceasefire and that he would talk to Putin this week.
Reuters reported in November that Putin was ready to negotiate a deal with Trump, but would refuse to make major territorial concessions and would insist Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
A senior Russian source told Reuters that Putin would find it hard to agree to the ceasefire idea without hashing out terms and getting some sort of guarantees.
“Putin has a strong position because Russia is advancing,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, told Reuters.
Without guarantees alongside a ceasefire, Russia’s position could swiftly become weaker and that Russia could then be blamed by the West for failing to end the war, they added.
“So yes, we are in favour of a truce with both hands, but we need at least framework guarantees and at least from the United States.”
Another senior Russian source said the ceasefire proposal looked, from Moscow’s perspective, to be a trap because Putin would find it hard to halt the war without concrete guarantees or pledges.
A third Russian source said the most important development was in fact that the United States had agreed to resume military aid and intelligence sharing, merely decorating that move with a ceasefire proposal.
