Why Putin could reject a ceasefire

With all the good news coming out of the Jeddah talks about a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, there’s only one question that needs to be answered: Will President Putin be interested in any kind of deal right now?

President Trump is convinced that Putin wants peace. But if the Russian leader truly wants to end his war, will he do so on America’s terms, or will he wait until he achieves one of his main objectives — the total subjugation of the four provinces in eastern Ukraine that he claimed to have annexed in the first seven months of the invasion?

At a ceremony in St. George’s Hall at the Kremlin in September 2022, Putin declared that Russia now had four new regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. He stated that the residents of these regions were “our citizens forever.”

Even though Russian forces had only partially occupied these areas, Putin made it clear that he considered the annexations a fait accompli and demanded that Kyiv agree to an immediate ceasefire.

Nearly 30 months later, Putin still hasn’t gained control over every inch of land in these four regions. For example, Russian troops have failed to hold onto the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Kherson, a gateway to Moscow-annexed Crimea, fell to Russian forces in March 2022 but was liberated by Ukrainian troops on November 11 of the same year. Ukraine controls Zaporizhzhia, though Russian forces have seized and continue to occupy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

For Putin, this remains unfinished business. When Trump became president and the two leaders — “old friends” — had a warm 90-minute phone call, Putin likely concluded that his plans for eastern Ukraine might actually come to fruition.

After Trump’s falling out with Volodymyr Zelensky last month — leading to the suspension of military aid and a partial withdrawal of intelligence-sharing — the Russian leader has likely instructed his commanders on the battlefield to go all out to retake Kherson and fully occupy the four regions he already considers Russian territory.

So, does he have any incentive to cooperate now that Marco Rubio has emerged from the nine-hour discussions in Jeddah with Zelensky’s negotiators holding the 30-day ceasefire offer and challenging Moscow? “The ball is now in Russia’s court. It’s up to them to say yes or no,” Rubio said.

Putin won’t have much time to decide. Trump said he would give Putin a call this week, and he is reportedly sending his heavyweight, tough-guy billionaire special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for a face-to-face meeting with the Russian president.

Witkoff has a reputation for never taking no for an answer. When Benjamin Netanyahu balked at meeting him to discuss a ceasefire in Gaza because the day Witkoff chose was the Sabbath, Trump’s envoy simply told him he was coming anyway—and that was that. Netanyahu relented.

The odds are that Putin will go along with Trump’s push for peace in Ukraine because there is unstoppable momentum to end the fighting, and his strategic partner in Beijing supports a deal.

However, what may irritate Putin is if the 30-day ceasefire agreed upon by Zelensky’s negotiators in Jeddah is followed by a proposal to freeze the battlefield frontlines as they stand today.

Russian forces have made territorial gains in the east, albeit limited, in recent weeks. If Trump’s suspension of military aid and intelligence-sharing had lasted any longer, Putin might have had the opportunity to launch a spring offensive to occupy more—if not all—of the four “annexed” regions.

This is where Trump has played a shrewd hand. The 30-day ceasefire proposal came with a promise to reinstate U.S. military aid and intelligence-sharing for the Kyiv government, effectively signaling to Putin that America is back on board with its European allies and that Zelensky will get the support he needs to defend against Russian aggression.

That just might shift Putin’s calculations.

Also important to him is the transformation in relations with the White House—a dramatic shift after years of a Cold War-style freeze. Putin will never break his partnership with China, no matter what Trump hopes to achieve by courting him. But it makes perfect sense for Putin to have a direct line to Trump, restoring the global status he lost after ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Putin stands to gain more by accepting the 30-day ceasefire offer—provided that any future peace settlement aligns precisely with the demands he has been making repeatedly over the past three years.

He may not be able to convince Trump and Zelensky to hand him the four regions he has marked in red on his map of Ukraine. But if he can get Trump to abandon the idea of Ukraine joining NATO and secure even a limited withdrawal of alliance forces from Eastern Europe, he might be tempted to sign a settlement agreement.

Still, many questions remain: Will Putin compromise on those four eastern Ukrainian regions? Will he even consider making a deal while Zelensky remains in power in Kyiv? And would NATO ever agree to pull back any of its forward-deployed forces from alliance member states near Russia’s borders?