Has Ukraine called Putin’s bluff?

Has Vladimir Putin’s bluff been called? It certainly looks that way. As long as the Ukrainians refused to consider a ceasefire, Moscow could portray them as the obstacle to the kind of quick deal Donald Trump appears eager to secure. Previously, Kyiv had floated the idea — after another unhelpful intervention from French President Emmanuel Macron — of a limited ceasefire covering only long-range drone attacks on each other’s cities, critical infrastructure, and operations in the Black Sea. But that was a non-starter, too transparently a trap for Putin, designed to make him look like the intransigent party if he rejected it.

That certainly seemed to be Kyiv’s plan as of last night, when an unprecedented attack on Moscow involving some 140 drones killed three civilians. The timing was hardly coincidental — it was meant to pressure the Kremlin.

However, after their meeting with US interlocutors in Jeddah today, the Ukrainians are suddenly on board with a full ceasefire, intended not just to provide a respite for both sides but also to create a pause for negotiations — or at least discussions about negotiations. Volodymyr Zelensky had initially ruled this out, but after a week of mounting pressure, with aid and intelligence support suspended, he appears to have realized he could no longer hold out. Crucially, not only has this submission to Washington led to the immediate resumption of support, but the ceasefire is also time-limited to just 30 days.

Zelensky had wanted concrete security guarantees as a condition for the ceasefire, rather than something to be negotiated later (and certainly more than the frankly implausible “protection” provided by the minerals deal with the U.S.). However, making the ceasefire time-limited — though open to extension by mutual agreement — helps mitigate some of the risks. Kyiv’s real nightmare was an open-ended ceasefire that would leave Putin with the strategic initiative to decide if, how, and when to resume the invasion, while a war-weary Ukrainian public pressured the government for some degree of demobilization or at least troop rotations.

Now, though, the ball is in Moscow’s court. Hawks are already arguing that agreeing to this ceasefire would mean squandering Russia’s current momentum — such as it is — by giving Kyiv a crucial window to regroup and rearm. At the same time, rejecting it would mean wasting the extraordinary opportunity Trump has given them to consolidate their gains, with a fifth of Ukraine under their control, and at least partially normalize relations with the US. There’s also the assumption that where America leads — especially on sanctions — Europe will eventually have to follow. And how would the notoriously thin-skinned Trump react to such a rejection, given how much he has favored Russia? Moscow is keenly aware that an angry Trump could be far more dangerous than Joe Biden ever was.

Putin may try to find a middle ground by agreeing to the ceasefire on the condition that Ukraine’s forces in the Kursk salient, already being pushed back, withdraw fully from Russian territory. He might see this as a way to reassure nationalists at home — whom he clearly feels he must manage, at least to some extent—while avoiding the direct insult to the U.S. that a flat-out rejection would represent.

Kyiv might actually be willing to take the opportunity to pull its troops out of what increasingly looks like a trap. However, they will still use it as a chance to contrast their newfound willingness to quiet the guns without conditions with a belligerent Putin. With Zelensky now apparently being invited back to the White House — no doubt deemed to have learned his lesson — the Ukrainians may not be thrilled with how things have unfolded, but they’ve turned what looked like a strategic disaster into a potential opportunity.

Real peace, of course (and Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize), remains over the horizon.