President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday did not rule out a U.S. and Ukrainian proposal for a monthlong cease-fire, but he set down numerous conditions that would most likely delay any truce — or could make one impossible to achieve.
Mr. Putin’s comments during a news conference highlighted the balance he was trying to strike, exuding confidence in Russia’s position on the battlefield while seeking to continue talks with the United States and avoid upsetting President Trump. The U.S. president, having antagonized the country’s allies and realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor, has emerged as a key geopolitical partner for Mr. Putin.
In sharp remarks later in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the Russian leader set so many conditions “that nothing will work out at all or that it will not work out for as long as possible.”
Mr. Putin’s comments came before he was to meet with Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, to discuss the cease-fire proposal that Ukraine had already agreed to. As of early Friday Moscow time, the Kremlin had not commented on how the meeting went. But the Kremlin said Mr. Putin had also spoken by phone with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, about Ukraine.
Mr. Putin’s remarks also came as Russia kept up its momentum in the key battle in the Kursk region of Russia, where Moscow’s forces appeared close to pushing Ukraine out of the territory it seized last summer. Such a development would reduce Kyiv’s leverage in future peace talks.
“The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the cease-fire proposal. “But there are questions that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk them through with our American colleagues and partners.”
Mr. Putin suggested that his conditions would include limits to Ukraine’s ability to mobilize more troops and import weaponry during a cease-fire — restrictions that would put Kyiv at a deeper disadvantage if the fighting restarted.
Mr. Putin’s comments were the first about the cease-fire offer that emerged from negotiations between the United States and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia this week. They suggested that the Russian leader viewed that proposal as just a part of a broader negotiation between Washington and Moscow, and that he was eager to show that he was engaging with Mr. Trump’s efforts to end the war that Mr. Putin began with his full-scale invasion three years ago.
Mr. Putin said he might “have a call with President Trump and talk it over with him.” When asked later on Thursday if he would speak with the Russian president, Mr. Trump said he would “love to meet” and talk with him.
“We’d like to see a cease-fire from Russia,” Mr. Trump told reporters while meeting with the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office.
Mr. Trump said the United States had discussed with Ukraine possible concessions as part of a peace agreement. “We’ve been discussing with Ukraine land and pieces of land that would be kept and lost, and all of the other elements of a final agreement,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “A lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed.”
Mr. Putin appears keen to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side, given the geopolitical victories that the U.S. president has already delivered for the Kremlin.
But Mr. Putin’s comments also showed that the Russian leader saw his forces as having the upper hand on the battlefield and that it would be to Russia’s advantage to draw out the negotiations.
He said on Thursday that Russia would continue to insist on a peace deal that addressed the “original causes” of the war — suggesting that his push for major Western concessions, such as a reduction of NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, hadn’t changed, though it wasn’t clear if he would make them a stipulation for a monthlong cease-fire.
Mr. Zelensky called Mr. Putin’s response to the cease-fire proposal “very predictable, very manipulative.”
“Putin, of course, is afraid to tell President Trump directly that he wants to continue this war, wants to kill Ukrainians,” he said in his evening address.
Mr. Putin was straightforward in declaring that a quick truce would be better for Ukraine than for Russia.
“In these conditions, it seems to me that it would be very good for the Ukrainian side if there were a cease-fire, even for 30 days,” Mr. Putin said. “And we’re in favor of it. But there are nuances.”
He then listed those “nuances,” starting with the Ukrainian forces still in Kursk. He said that Russia would not allow those troops to peacefully withdraw and that the Ukrainian leadership could instead order them “to simply surrender.”
Ukraine stunned Russia in August with a cross-border incursion into Kursk, seizing several hundred square miles of territory.
But Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that the country’s military had regained full control of Sudzha, the main town in Kursk that Ukraine had seized. Ukrainian officials have not confirmed a retreat from the town, where Wednesday night Kyiv’s military reported fierce fighting. If confirmed, such a retreat would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control.
Mr. Putin also suggested he might demand that Ukraine’s Western allies halt arms deliveries, and said it was not clear how the cease-fire would be monitored along a front line of some 700 miles.
“These are all questions demanding very careful study,” he said.
While Mr. Putin’s conditions may be impossible for Ukraine to accept, he did not repeat his onerous demand from last year that a cease-fire would depend on Ukraine’s withdrawing from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia had declared as its own but did not fully control.
Still, Dara Massicot, a Russian military specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which is based in Washington, called Mr. Putin’s new demands “very dangerous for Ukraine.”
In effect, she argued, Mr. Putin was pushing for a scenario in which the West would not be able to help Ukraine rebuild its armed forces while Russian factories pumped out new weaponry.
“What Putin said today implies that the West cannot support Ukraine while Russia regenerates,” she said.
Reporting was contributed by Maria Varenikova from Kyiv, Ukraine; Marc Santora from Dnipro, Ukraine; Paul Sonne from Berlin; and Eric Schmitt from Washington.