Pressure on Putin as Ukraine agrees to Trump’s ceasefire proposal

Washington and Kyiv’s proposed 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine will intensify pressure on Russia, but Moscow is unlikely to make concessions, analysts said.

US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin may speak as soon as this week, but Western security officials expect Putin to present deliberately “maximalist” demands in order to prolong the conflict, Bloomberg reported.

That owes in part to domestic pressures: Putin’s militarization of Russian society has created a huge corps of veterans, meaning he “is unlikely to demobilize,” one expert said.

Yet not accepting the ceasefire would also create problems, potentially derailing the recent reset in US-Russia relations.