44m ago
09.38 CET
Morning
opening: Decoding Vladimir Putin
Ukrainian
president Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of
“manipulative” response to the US proposal for a ceasefire, saying Putin
pretended to accept it “at the moment he is, in fact, preparing to reject it.”
“That’s
why, in Moscow, they are surrounding the ceasefire idea with such preconditions
that it either fails or gets dragged out for as long as possible. Putin does
this often — he doesn’t say ‘no’ outright, but he drags things out and makes
reasonable solutions impossible,” he said.
US
president Donald Trump also acknowledged that while Putin’s response was
“promising,” it was also “incomplete.”
Getting
to the bottom of what Putin actually wants and planning what to do next in
response will be the focus of the next few days.
US
special envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow last night where he was meant to meet
with Vladimir Putin or senior Russian officials to discuss the proposals. As of
this morning, neither the Kremlin nor the White House issued any readouts from
their discussion. Could he still be there?
Speaking
on Fox News overnight, the US national security adviser Mike Waltz praised
Ukrainians for “a very different approach than you saw … in the Oval Office,”
and urged all sides to move to ceasefire.
He
declined to go into the details of discussions Witkoff had in Moscow, but
insisted there was “some cautious optimism,” as the US administration expects
to hear back from Witkoff “to evaluate and for the president to make decisions
on next steps.”
When it
was put to him that Ukraine not be allowed to enter Nato and would probably
have to give up some Russian-occupied territories in Donbas, Waltz said “you
are not wrong in any of that.”
“What’s
important is that we are discussing all of those things with both sides,” he
said.
Given
public comments from Ukrainian officials on the integrity of the Ukrainian
territory, it’s difficult to imagine their enthusiasm for such proposal.
On
Saturday, UK prime minister Keir Starmer will host a virtual meeting of leaders
involved in his planning for “the coalition of the willing,” a follow up on his
Lancaster House summit earlier this month.
It’s
Friday, 14 March 2025, and this is Europe live. It’s Jakub Krupa here.
Good
morning.
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