European Leaders Pressure Russia for a Cease-Fire, but Putin Refuses

 

European Leaders Pressure Russia for a Cease-Fire, but Putin Refuses

 

Faced with the threat of new sanctions, President Vladimir V. Putin called for direct talks between Ukraine and Russia in the coming days.

 

Marc Santora Anton Troianovski

By Marc Santora and Anton Troianovski

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Berlin

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/10/world/europe/ukraine-war-visit-starmer-macron-zelensky-merz.html

Published May 10, 2025

Updated May 11, 2025, 12:40 a.m. ET

 

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Poland, on their first joint visit to Ukraine, said on Saturday that Russia would face “new and massive” sanctions on its banking and energy sectors if President Vladimir V. Putin refused to agree to a full, unconditional 30-day cease-fire.

 

Hours later, Mr. Putin brushed that demand aside and called instead for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine to be held in Turkey.

 

Mr. Putin, speaking to reporters in an unusual statement after 1 a.m. on Sunday, said Russia was “prepared for serious negotiations with Ukraine” and “without any preconditions.” He proposed a meeting between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15, without specifying who would participate in the talks.

 

He did not directly address the European call for a 30-day cease-fire, but indicated Russia wouldn’t stop fighting before the negotiations on May 15, if they happen.

 

There was no immediate response from Ukraine early Sunday, but about an hour after Mr. Putin’s news conference, authorities reported an attack by Russian exploding drones that set off air alerts in several cities, including Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

 

“The point is to eliminate the root causes of the conflict,” Mr. Putin said. “We don’t rule out that in the course of these negotiations, it will be possible to reach agreement on some new truces, on a new cease-fire, and a real one at that.”

 

In Kyiv on Saturday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain held a news conference with President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

 

“All of us are calling Putin out,” Mr. Starmer said. “If he’s serious about peace, then he has a chance to show it now.”

 

Mr. Starmer said the European effort, which calls for a truce to begin on Monday, had been coordinated closely with the White House.

 

A senior U.S. official, speaking on background because of a lack of authorization to discuss the negotiations, said that President Trump had been in touch with European leaders throughout the week, in the lead-up to the announcement in Kyiv, and that he signaled to Mr. Starmer and Mr. Macron on Saturday morning that he supported their proposal for sanctions absent a cease-fire by Monday.

 

Mr. Trump is also not opposed to having the United States help monitor a cease-fire, but did not make firm commitments about what that would entail or require, the official said. White House officials stressed that Mr. Trump has left sanctions on the table repeatedly, including in a recent Truth Social post.

 

The Trump administration proposed the 30-day cease-fire, to which Kyiv agreed, during talks this spring in Saudi Arabia.

 

The competing proposals from Kyiv and Moscow are the latest instance in which both Russia and Ukraine have sought to position themselves as seeking peace amid Mr. Trump’s efforts to end the war. Ukraine first agreed to a 30-day cease-fire in March, but Mr. Putin did not, instead setting onerous conditions such as a halt to Western military aid to Kyiv.

 

In recent weeks, Mr. Putin has repeatedly called for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, though Sunday’s comments were his most extensive on the matter. Ukraine has also said it is ready for negotiations, but no direct talks have taken place, as far as is known.

 

The last time that Ukraine and Russia publicly engaged in peace talks was in Istanbul in March 2022. Mr. Putin said Sunday that the proposed May 15 meeting could serve as a continuation of those Istanbul talks three years ago, in which Russia sought to limit the size of Ukraine’s military in addition to banning the country from ever joining NATO.

 

Earlier Saturday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, released a photograph of the five leaders huddled around a phone. Mr. Sybiha said they were talking with Mr. Trump.

 

“Ukraine and all allies are ready for a full unconditional ceasefire on land, air, and at sea for at least 30 days starting already on Monday,” Mr. Sybiha wrote on social media. “If Russia agrees and effective monitoring is ensured, a durable ceasefire and confidence-building measures can pave the way to peace negotiations.”

 

Before the European leaders gave their news conference, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, dismissed the threat of new sanctions, telling the Russian broadcaster Rossiya-1 that the country was “accustomed to such pressure measures and knows how to minimize their consequences.”

 

He had earlier said that Russia remained opposed to any cease-fire unless Western nations stopped providing military aid to Ukraine, according to the Russian news agency Tass.

 

The visit of the European leaders to Kyiv — which began with a solemn tribute to the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle, as the men laid flowers at a makeshift memorial — came one day after Russia’s celebration of the 80th anniversary of the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. At that celebration, Mr. Putin welcomed President Xi Jinping of China and other foreign dignitaries to Moscow for a military parade meant to project Russia’s power and Mr. Putin’s bid to reshape the global order on his terms.

 

The two events crystallized both the changing contours of the war in Ukraine and the broader geopolitical shift underway since Mr. Trump entered office. In only a few months, Mr. Trump has reversed core tenets of U.S. foreign policy, and is presiding over the weakening of the trans-Atlantic bond that helped set Europe on the path to peace after the cataclysm of World War II.

 

At the moment, Ukraine is caught between an emboldened Russia, buoyed by China, North Korea and Iran, and a Europe struggling to fill the void left by the United States.

 

It has been more than 120 days since the United States announced a new round of military assistance to Ukraine. It remains unclear if the Trump administration plans to spend the remaining $3.85 billion that Congress has authorized for additional withdrawals from the Defense Department’s stockpiles.

 

Ukraine is racing to build up its domestic arms production and its European allies have increased their military assistance. Even if Russia agrees to a cease-fire, Ukraine and its allies believe that the only way to ensure a lasting peace is through military strength.

 

But the coming weeks will test whether European resolve and resources can match the scale of the challenge as the war’s outcome increasingly becomes Europe’s problem to solve.

 

Most of the pressure Washington has brought to bear to end the fighting has been directed at Kyiv, though Mr. Trump has recently shown flashes of frustration with Moscow.

 

Daniel Fried, a former top U.S. diplomat and fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said there was hope that the American and European policies on Ukraine are converging, but many tests remained.

 

“The moment of truth” will come, he said, if Mr. Putin refuses the 30-day cease-fire. And then, if there is a cease-fire, he said, the next test may come if Russia violates the truce.

 

“What, then, will be the U.S. response?” he said.

 

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

 

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa.

 

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.