American and Russian officers are anticipated to satisfy in Moscow on Thursday as President Vladimir V. Putin weighs a 30-day cease-fire proposal from the USA and Ukraine.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, advised reporters at about noon Moscow time on Thursday that American officers have been en route.
“Negotiators are certainly flying in, and contacts are certainly deliberate,” Mr. Peskov stated. “We gained’t get forward of ourselves — we’ll speak about it afterward.”
Shortly after Mr. Peskov’s remarks, Russian information businesses reported {that a} aircraft continuously utilized by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Center East envoy, had landed in Moscow from Qatar. This could be Mr. Witkoff’s second go to to Russia in weeks. Final month, he met with Mr. Putin for a number of hours when he came to Moscow to finalize the prisoner exchange that freed Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher jailed in Russia.
Ukraine has stated it might again a short lived cease-fire if Russia did the identical.
Mr. Peskov stated Thursday that Russia would solely supply its response to the cease-fire proposal after talks with the USA through which American officers would lay out that plan in additional element. Mr. Trump has stated that he deliberate to talk to Mr. Putin instantly this week.
“After we obtain this info — not by means of the press however by means of bilateral dialogue — then the time will come for pondering it over and formulating a place,” Mr. Peskov stated.
Additionally on Thursday, Mr. Putin is anticipated to satisfy the authoritarian president of neighboring Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. The 2 shut allies will maintain a information convention through which Mr. Putin might make his first public remarks in regards to the 30-day cease-fire supply, Tass, Russia’s state information company, reported.
The flurry of diplomacy got here as Moscow’s forces intensified a marketing campaign to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region of Russia, the border space the place Kyiv’s troops occupied a number of hundred sq. miles of territory in a shock incursion final August.
