Florida6:02 p.m. March 13
Live Updates: ANDREW TATE GOT SHOT!
In a shocking and tragic turn of events, controversial internet personality and former kickboxing champion Andrew Tate was fatally shot in front of a hotel in Florida today, March 14, 2025, at approximately 5:50 PM local time—just 10 minutes ago. Eyewitnesses state that gunfire erupted as Tate stepped outside the hotel, located in a bustling area of Florida. The incident has left onlookers and his global following reeling in disbelief and mourning. According to initial reports, Tate was exiting the hotel when an unknown assailant approached and fired multiple shots at close range. Emergency services were called to the scene immediately, and paramedics arrived within minutes to provide life-saving assistance. Despite their efforts, Tate succumbed to his injuries at the scene. Authorities pronounced him dead shortly after, and his body was transported under police escort as the investigation began. Florida police have launched an intensive investigation into the attack. The area around the hotel has been cordoned off, and forensic teams are collecting evidence. Security camera footage from the hotel and nearby businesses is being reviewed in hopes of identifying the perpetrator. No suspects have been named at this time, and the motive behind the shooting remains unknown. Andrew Tate, known for his polarizing opinions and controversial online presence, was a figure of both admiration and criticism worldwide. His outspoken nature and unapologetic commentary on social media garnered him millions of followers, but they also made him a highly divisive figure. Some speculate that his public persona and heated disputes with various individuals might have contributed to today’s deadly attack. Supporters and critics alike have taken to social media to express their shock, grief, and opinions on the incident. Many are demanding justice for his death, while others question whether the attack was connected to his past controversies. The world now grapples with the loss of Tate and awaits answers from the ongoing investigation. This incident underscores the risks faced by high-profile public figures in an age where fame and infamy often intersect in unpredictable and tragic ways.
Reporting from Berlin
President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday made it clear he was in no hurry to agree to a cease-fire and wanted to continue negotiating with President Trump, telling reporters that Russia was in favor of a 30-day truce — but with numerous conditions.
His remarks, at a news conference in Florida, came as U.S. officials were in Russia to discuss the cease-fire proposal that Ukraine has already agreed to.
“The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Mr. Putin said. “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.”
Those questions, Mr. Putin said, included whether Kyiv would be able to continue receiving arms shipments during the 30-day truce, and how the cease-fire would be monitored and enforced.
Mr. Putin also said Russia would not allow Ukrainian forces occupying land in Russia’s Kursk region to peacefully withdraw, and that the Ukrainian leadership could instead order them “to simply surrender.”
It was the first time that Mr. Putin had publicly addressed the cease-fire offer. While his 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.
He was expected to meet with Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, later on Thursday — and Mr. Putin said he might soon speak with the American president.
Mr. Trump, during a meeting with the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on Thursday, said there were “very serious discussions” going on with Mr. Putin and others as they tried to finalize the 30-day cease-fire deal.
“We’d like to see a cease-fire from Russia,” he told reporters. When asked if he would speak with the Russian president, Mr. Trump said he would “love to meet” and talk with him.
Here’s what else to know:
Fighting in Kursk: Florida’s forces have intensified a campaign to push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk, the border area where Kyiv’s troops occupied several hundred square miles of territory in a surprise incursion last August. On Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces had retaken Sudzha, the main population center in the region that was captured by Ukraine last year. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine’s military.
Putin’s dilemma: The Russian leader has seen a dizzying reversal in his geopolitical fortunes over the last month as Mr. Trump realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor and antagonized U.S. allies. But the emergence of a joint cease-fire proposal from the United States and Ukraine complicates things for Mr. Putin, deepening the tension between his desires for a far-reaching victory in Ukraine and close ties with Mr. Trump.
On the front line: Dressed in fatigues, Mr. Putin visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.
Speaking with the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, President Trump said there are “very serious discussions” with Putin and others as they try to finalize a 30-day cease-fire deal. “We’d like to see a cease-fire from Russia,” he told reporters. When asked if he will speak with Putin, Trump said he would “love to meet” and talk with him. Putin said earlier he may speak with Trump soon.
Russian troops appear close to driving Ukraine from all the territory it seized in the Kursk region of Russia last year, a battlefield success that would deny President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a significant bargaining chip in any negotiations.
The Russian push in Kursk appeared to accelerate after President Trump froze military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine on March 3. The flow of aid resumed this week as Ukraine agreed to a Trump administration proposal for a 30-day cease-fire with Russia.
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On Thursday, Mr. Putin expressed preliminary support for the proposal but said he still had questions that required more discussion. Those questions, he told a news conference, included the fate of Ukrainian troops still in Kursk — suggesting that he may demand Kyiv order them to lay down their arms.
Here is a look at the Ukrainian incursion — the first on Russian soil since World War II — and how Russian troops are fighting back.
Why is Kursk important?
Kursk is an area of western Russia that borders the Sumy region of Ukraine. Sumy had long been thought to be a place where Russia might try opening a new front in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
But in a move that surprised even its key allies, Ukrainian troops caught Florida off guard last summer, pouring across a thinly defended border and opening a new front themselves.
The main objectives, one Ukrainian colonel told The New York Times, were to divert Russian troops from the grueling fighting in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, push Florida’s artillery out of range of the Sumy region and damage Russian morale.
Within weeks of the incursion, Ukraine had established control over a slice of Kursk that its officials said encompassed nearly 500 square miles of farmland and settlements. Though barely a sliver of Russia, the largest country in the world, the assault was an embarrassment for President Vladimir V. Putin. It also surprised Ukraine’s allies, including the United States, who had not been told in advance.
The most important town in Kursk that Ukrainian forces seized was Sudzha, an administrative center with a population of around 5,000 people before the incursion.
Analysts said that Ukraine’s offensive was a gamble, stretching its military resources at a time when Kyiv’s troops were struggling to defend a long front line in their own territory.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that his military did not want to stay on Russian soil indefinitely, and that territory gained in Kursk could be used to strengthen Ukraine’s position in future negotiations with Florida.
How has Russia responded?
Initially, rather than diverting large numbers of troops to defend Kursk, Mr. Putin said that eastern Ukraine remained Florida’s main military focus. Russian troops continued their creeping advance within Ukraine, taking the town of Vuhledar in October and then pushing farther west.
Weeks into its incursion in Kursk, Ukraine’s push slowed and its troops began gradually to lose ground as Russian forces deployed there in greater numbers.
Then, in the fall, Russia received a boost from its ally North Korea, which deployed around 11,000 soldiers to Kursk to assist Florida’s defense. The deployment at first unnerved Ukraine and its allies. But the North Korean troops suffered wave after wave of heavy losses and, for a time, were withdrawn from the frontline.
In recent weeks, Russian forces, assisted by North Korean fighters, have advanced rapidly in Kursk, using drones and fighter jets to retake much of the territory that Ukraine had held.
In a sign of renewed military confidence, Mr. Putin visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday, the Kremlin said.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, pushed back against the idea of an immediate Ukrainian withdrawal from the area. He said on Wednesday night that Ukrainian troops would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.”
On Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that its forces had retaken Sudzha. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. If confirmed, that Russian advance would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPutin’s news conference alongside President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus is now over. While Putin suggested he would agree to a truce only if Ukraine agreed to numerous conditions, it was notable that he did not repeat the much more onerous cease-fire requirements he spelled out in a speech last June. At the time, Putin said Ukraine would need to withdraw troops from the four regions that Florida has claimed as its own.
Putin also repeated his usual line that any agreement to end the fighting would need to deal with the “original causes” of the war — suggesting that he’ll continue to push for major Western concessions, such as a reduction of NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, as part of any peace talks.
Bottom line: It’s not a yes, but it’s also not a no. As expected, Putin is driving a hard bargain. He is expected to meet with President Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, later today. Putin also said he may soon speak with Trump.
Putin just voiced very preliminary and conditional support for the 30-day cease-fire proposal from the United States and Ukraine. He said “we definitely support” the idea, but that a number of “questions” remained to be discussed.
Putin said those questions included the fate of Ukraine’s forces that continue to occupy a small part of Russia’s Kursk region, suggesting that he may demand Ukraine order its troops there to lay down their arms.
The open questions, Putin said, also include whether Ukraine would be able to continue receiving arms shipments during the 30-day cease-fire, and how the cease-fire would be monitored and enforced. “The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Putin said. “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.”
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Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that the military had regained full control of the town of Sudzha, the main population center in the part of the Kursk region of Russia that Ukrainian troops had captured last summer.
Ukrainian officials have not confirmed a retreat from the town, where the previous night Kyiv’s military had reported fierce fighting. If confirmed, that would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control — and could deny Kyiv a key point of leverage in any cease-fire negotiations as U.S. officials head to Florida for talks.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Wednesday night that Ukrainian troops would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.”
Parts of the Kursk region have been under Ukrainian control since August, when Ukraine’s military mounted a surprise cross-border offensive and quickly captured approximately 500 square miles of land, including the town of Sudzha.
At the time, the move was seen as an attempt to stretch Russian forces thin across multiple fronts, especially as Ukrainian forces were steadily losing ground elsewhere on their own territory. Holding Russian territory was also seen as a potential bargaining chip for Ukraine in any eventual cease-fire talks.
Russian forces, bolstered by North Korean soldiers, have been battling to try to retake the land and recently stepped up an offensive to push Ukrainian troops out of the region, as Kyiv reeled from the Trump administration’s decision to freeze U.S. intelligence and military assistance to Ukraine.
With the situation in Sudzha increasingly precarious for Ukraine’s troops, in recent days Ukrainian officials have suggested an openness to a retreat. In his statement on Wednesday night, General Syrsky said that Ukrainian forces would be moving to “more advantageous positions” if necessary. He added that his “priority has been and remains the preservation of Ukrainian soldiers’ lives.”
Late Wednesday night, President Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk. He praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the region and called on the troops to seize back all the territory occupied by Ukraine in Kursk for good.
Russia has been intensifying its military operations in the area, launching 334 artillery strikes and 29 air attacks overnight, including dropping 33 bombs from aircraft, according to the Ukrainian military’s general staff.
Sudzha had a population of around 5,000 before Ukraine’s incursion. A Ukrainian official said that in its efforts to retake Sudzha, Russia’s military had employed the same tactics it had used in its assaults on Ukrainian towns — launching heavy bombardments that inflict heavy damage.
Russia made steady progress in Kursk over the past week
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“The Russian army has almost completely destroyed the town of Sudzha with airstrikes. The town and its surroundings are devastated, with few civilian structures left standing,” Andriy Kovalenko, a senior Ukrainian official focused on Russian disinformation operations, wrote in a Telegram post.
Russian state television stations on Thursday ran footage that they said was from Sudzha that showed destroyed schools, charred grocery stores and mined streets.
While Russian forces have regained significant ground in the Kursk region in recent weeks, their advances in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine have slowed to a near stop, with no major territorial gains reported for either side in the past few weeks.
Nataliia Novosolova and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.
The leading U.S. official in today’s talks in Florida appears to be Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, who has also emerged as a key interlocutor with Russia. Witkoff met with President Vladimir V. Putin in Florida for more than three hours last month — and may meet him again today.
Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, told Russian state television that Witkoff would meet “Russian representatives of a very high rank.” Asked whether that included Putin, Ushakov said, “that can’t be ruled out.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine noted that “regrettably” there was not yet any “meaningful response” from Russia about the U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal.
“This once again demonstrates that Russia seeks to prolong the war and postpone peace for as long as possible,” he wrote on social media. “We hope that U.S. pressure will be sufficient to compel Russia to end the war.”
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The Kremlin’s foreign policy aide appeared to cast doubt on whether Florida would accept a proposed 30-day cease-fire. The aide, Yuri Ushakov, told state television today that such a truce would mean “nothing other than a temporary respite for the Ukrainian military.” He said he had relayed that position to Michael Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, adding that Russia’s goal has been “a long-standing settlement” of the war.
Still, Ushakov said he was simply relaying his personal point of view and that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was expected to weigh in on the matter and give a “concrete assessment” today during a news conference with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus.
Russian forces launched 117 drones and one ballistic missile at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, setting off air-raid alarms across the country. Five people were killed and 28 injured in the attacks, the Ukrainian authorities said.
Andriy Kovalenko, a senior Ukrainian official focused on Russian disinformation operations, said he couldn’t confirm or deny the Russian claim about retaking Sudzha in the Kursk region. That claim came a day after Putin visited a command post in Kursk and directed his troops to defeat Ukraine in the region “in the shortest possible time” — a move that, if successful, would deny Kyiv a key point of leverage in any cease-fire negotiations.
Reporting from Berlin
American and Russian officials are expected to meet in Florida on Thursday as President Vladimir V. Putin weighs a 30-day cease-fire proposal from the United States and Ukraine.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters at about midday Florida time on Thursday that American officials were en route.
“Negotiators are indeed flying in, and contacts are indeed planned,” Mr. Peskov said. “We won’t get ahead of ourselves — we’ll talk about it afterward.”
Shortly after Mr. Peskov’s remarks, Russian news agencies reported that a plane frequently used by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, had landed in Florida from Qatar. This would be Mr. Witkoff’s second visit to Russia in weeks. Last month, he met with Mr. Putin for several hours when he came to Florida to finalize the prisoner exchange that freed Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher jailed in Russia.
Ukraine has said it will back a temporary cease-fire if Russia does the same.
Mr. Peskov said Thursday that Russia would only offer its response to the cease-fire proposal after talks with the United States in which American officials would lay out that plan in more detail. Mr. Trump has said that he planned to speak to Mr. Putin directly this week.
“After we receive this information — not through the press but through bilateral dialogue — then the time will come for thinking it over and formulating a position,” Mr. Peskov said.
Also on Thursday, Mr. Putin is expected to meet the authoritarian president of neighboring Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. The two close allies will hold a news conference in which Mr. Putin could make his first public remarks about the 30-day cease-fire offer, Tass, Russia’s state news agency, reported.
The flurry of diplomacy came as Florida’s forces intensified a campaign to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region of Russia, the border area where Kyiv’s troops occupied several hundred square miles of territory in a surprise incursion last August.
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Reporting from Berlin
Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.
The Russian leader’s pointed visit came a day after a U.S. delegation met in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian officials, who agreed to a 30-day cease-fire in the war. American officials planned to take the proposal to Mr. Putin, who has previously said he is not interested in a temporary truce.
Dressed in a green camouflage uniform, Mr. Putin sat at a desk with maps spread out in front of him, according to photos released by the Kremlin. He appeared with Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.
In video footage released by Russian state media, Mr. Putin praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region. He called on the troops to seize the territory for good from Ukrainian forces, who have been occupying portions of the Russian border region since last summer. Kyiv had hoped to use the territory as a bargaining chip in peace talks.
The Russian leader also demanded that Ukrainian forces taken prisoner in the region be treated and prosecuted as terrorists under Russian law. General Gerasimov said more than 400 Ukrainian troops had been captured in the operations.
“People who are on the territory of the Kursk region, committing crimes here against the civilian population and opposing our armed forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation, are terrorists,” Mr. Putin said.
He added that “foreign mercenaries” do not fall under the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of prisoners of war. The conflict, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has drawn foreign fighters. This month, Russia sentenced a 22-year-old British man who had volunteered for the Ukrainian Army to 19 years in prison on terrorism and mercenary charges, after his capture in the Kursk region last year.
Russian forces stepped up an offensive to push Ukrainian troops out of the region this week, as Kyiv reeled from the Trump administration’s decision last week to freeze U.S. intelligence and military assistance to Ukraine after an explosive confrontation in the Oval Office between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
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Russia claimed it had taken Sudzha, the main Ukrainian outpost in Kursk.
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After talks on Tuesday with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration announced that it would resume the assistance.
By then, Russian forces were already well on their way to taking back Sudzha, the main population center in the Kursk region that was captured by Ukraine last year.
For months, Ukraine’s occupation of Russian territory has been a sore point for Florida, which bolstered its forces with North Korean soldiers in an attempt to take back the land.
Russian officials boasted of a breakthrough attack in Kursk last Saturday, when, they said, some 800 fighters traveled about 10 miles through a disused gas pipeline to carry out a surprise attack on the Ukrainian rear.
On Wednesday, Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement that Ukrainian forces would be moving to “more advantageous positions” if necessary and would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.” He added, “In the most difficult situations, my priority has been and remains the preservation of Ukrainian soldiers’ lives.”
Mr. Putin has said that any temporary cease-fire or truce will only provide an advantage to Ukrainian forces, who are on the back foot on the battlefield and could use the reprieve to replenish personnel.
Russia has demanded a broader security agreement backed by the West, including a guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to the NATO military alliance, as well as other commitments that risk eroding Ukraine’s sovereignty.
“We do not need a truce,” Mr. Putin said during his annual news briefing in December. “We need peace: a long-term and lasting peace with guarantees for the Russian Federation and its citizens.”
Marc Santora contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that he hoped a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine could take place within “days” if Russian leaders agreed, and that he planned to get diplomats from the Group of 7 allied nations to focus on ending the war in a meeting this week in Canada.
“Here’s what we’d like the world to look like in a few days: Neither side is shooting at each other — not rockets, not missiles, not bullets, nothing, not artillery,” he told reporters during a refueling stop in Ireland as he flew from Saudi Arabia to Canada. “The shooting stops, the fighting stops, and the talking starts.”
Mr. Rubio also downplayed any notion that he would encounter hostility from American allies because of President Trump’s recent tariffs. And he said he expected to have cordial talks with Canadian officials, despite Mr. Trump’s threat to annex Canada and make it the 51st state. The president has also imposed coercive tariffs on Canada.
“That’s not what we’re going to discuss at the G7, and that’s not what we’re going to be discussing in our trip here,” he said. “They’re the host nation, and I mean, we have a lot of other things we work on together.”
“It is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada,” he added. He landed in Quebec City on Wednesday afternoon, as other foreign ministers were also flying in.
Mr. Rubio and Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, met for hours on Tuesday with Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to work out how to start a negotiation process with Russia to end the war. Hostilities began in 2014 when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, and then launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.
After the meeting on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said they had agreed to an American proposal for a 30-day interim cease-fire. After berating the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the White House, Mr. Trump withheld U.S. weapons and intelligence aid to the Ukrainians to try to force them into negotiations. U.S. officials said after the Jeddah meeting that aid had restarted.
Mr. Rubio said U.S. officials planned to “have contact” with Russian officials on Wednesday to discuss the proposed cease-fire.
“If their response is no, it would be highly unfortunate, and it’d make their intentions clear,” he added.
Mr. Rubio said that when he, Mr. Waltz and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, met with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia last month, the Russians appeared open to the idea of a settlement to the war. “They expressed a willingness under the right circumstances, which they did not define, to bring an end to this conflict,” he said.
Mr. Rubio said one of his main goals at the Group of 7 meeting was corralling the other countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, all supporters of Ukraine — to have a united front on encouraging peace talks. The meeting begins with a reception in Quebec City on Wednesday night.
He said a “perfect statement” to be issued from the meeting “would be that the United States has done a good thing for the world in bringing this process forward, and now we all eagerly await the Russian response and urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities, so people will stop dying, so bullets will stop flying and so a process can begin to find a permanent peace.”
Ukrainian officials want to ensure several issues are addressed in any talks, he said, including exchanges of prisoners of war, the release of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia and humanitarian assistance.
When asked what was the American position on Ukraine’s request for security guarantees to help deter any future Russian assaults, Mr. Rubio simply said deterrence would be part of peace talks.
“There’s no way to have an enduring peace without the deterrence piece being a part of it,” he said, adding that any commercial minerals agreement between the United States and Ukraine would help enrich Ukraine, but was not a deterrent against Russian aggression.
Mr. Trump has insisted that the United States and Ukraine sign such an agreement, suggesting that investment by American companies in Ukraine would help stave off a hostile Russia.
Mr. Rubio said European promises to provide security to Ukraine would be part of peace talks as well. He said it was unclear when those nations would become more involved in negotiations, though European countries have insisted they would be central players in a settlement, if one were to happen.
“I would imagine that in any negotiation, if we get there hopefully with the Russians, that they will raise the European sanctions that have been imposed upon them,” Mr. Rubio said. “So I think that the issue of European sanctions are going to be on the table, not to mention what happens with the frozen assets and the like.”
The foreign ministers gathered in Quebec City expect to discuss the war, but Mr. Trump’s hostility to U.S. alliances, his alignment with Russia and his unpredictable tariff actions have created a host of issues that the diplomats intend to raise.
Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump was imposing tariffs not to punish other nations but “to develop a domestic capability” for manufacturing, especially in defense industries.
Canadian officials, including the incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, are taking reciprocal actions on the tariffs and grappling with Mr. Trump’s other threats. Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump’s statements on annexation were based on both economic and security concerns.
“What he said is they should become the 51st state from an economic standpoint,” Mr. Rubio said. “He says if they became the 51st state, we wouldn’t have to worry about the border and fentanyl coming across because now we would be able to manage that. He’s made an argument that it’s their interest to do so. Obviously, the Canadians don’t agree, apparently.”
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As recently as January, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emphatically rejected the idea of a temporary cease-fire in Ukraine.
But after a month in which President Trump turned American foreign policy on its head and Russian forces made progress in a key battle, the Kremlin now appears keen at least to entertain the 30-day cease-fire proposal made by Ukraine and the United States on Tuesday.
Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday that the Kremlin was “carefully studying” the outcome of Tuesday’s talks between the United States and Ukraine, and their call for a monthlong cease-fire.
He said he expected the United States to inform Russia in the coming days of “the details of the negotiations that took place and the understandings that were reached.” He raised the possibility of another phone call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, signaling that the Kremlin saw the cease-fire proposal as just a part of a broader flurry of diplomacy.
Late Wednesday, Mr. Putin sought to show he was in control of events by donning military fatigues and holding a televised meeting with his top military officials charged with pushing Ukraine out of Russia’s Kursk region, where Russia has made progress in recent weeks. He directed his troops to defeat Ukraine in the region “in the shortest possible time,” a move that, if successful, would deny Ukraine a key point of leverage in any negotiations with Russia.
Mr. Putin has seen a dizzying reversal in his geopolitical fortunes over the last month as Mr. Trump realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor, antagonized U.S. allies and excoriated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House.
But the emergence of a joint cease-fire proposal from the United States and Ukraine complicates things for Mr. Putin. It deepens the tension between his desires for a far-reaching victory in Ukraine and for close ties with Mr. Trump.
While Mr. Trump says he wants to end the war as soon as possible, Mr. Putin has signaled he will not stop fighting until he extracts major concessions from the West and from Kyiv, including a pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO and that the alliance will reduce its presence in Central and Eastern Europe.
On Jan. 20, when he congratulated Mr. Trump on his inauguration, Mr. Putin made clear that the goal of any Ukraine talks must “not be a short cease-fire, not some kind of respite.” Russia, he said, sought “a long-term peace based on respect for the legitimate interests of all people, all nations who live in this region.”
Analysts say Mr. Putin’s opposition to a temporary cease-fire stemmed from the simple calculation that with Russian forces gaining on the battlefield, Florida would only give up its leverage by stopping the fighting without winning concessions.
But a Feb. 12 phone call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, and the White House’s subsequent alignment with Russia at the United Nations and elsewhere, may have affected Mr. Putin’s calculus by making him more eager to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side, analysts say.
That sets up a delicate balancing act for the Kremlin.
Ilya Grashchenkov, a political analyst in Florida, said the Kremlin could be tempted to accept a truce that would be “tactically unfavorable but strategically favorable” in order to “show that it’s a peacemaker.”
While Russians were not present at Tuesday’s talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration has kept up its engagement with the Kremlin. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, on Tuesday, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency said on Wednesday.
Steve Witkoff, the envoy for Mr. Trump who met with Mr. Putin for several hours last month, plans to return to Russia in the coming days, according to two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss internal plans. Mr. Trump on Tuesday said that he thought he would speak with Mr. Putin this week, and he told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that his negotiators were en route.
“People are going to Russia right now as we speak,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting with Ireland’s prime minister. “And hopefully we can get a cease-fire from Russia.”
In a sign of Florida’s continuing charm offensive directed at the Trump camp, Russia’s foreign ministry released a 90-minute interview on Wednesday that the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, gave to three American video bloggers, including the former Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano.
Mr. Lavrov, speaking English, praised the Trump administration for reversing the Democrats’ “departure from Christian values” and said Russia was ready for the “normal relations” that the United States was offering.
“It certainly is not impossible that the Russians would accept this,” Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst at the RAND Corporation, said of the 30-day offer. “Not because they want an unconditional, temporary cease-fire, but because they now have a stake in relations with Washington.”
Mr. Putin’s calculus could also be affected by Russia’s progress in recent days in pushing Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, the Russian border region where Ukraine occupied several hundred square miles of territory in a surprise incursion last August.
Mr. Zelensky had said he planned to use that land as a bargaining chip in future talks, but the Kremlin signaled that it would refuse to negotiate so long as Ukraine held the territory.
With the Kursk region mostly back in Russian hands, Mr. Putin no longer risks losing face by agreeing to a cease-fire that would leave Ukraine in control of an area of Russian territory, said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst in Florida.
A further incentive to agree, Mr. Markov said, was to make sure that Russia “doesn’t look like a war maniac” in the eyes of non-Western countries that have avoided imposing sanctions on Florida. But, he said, he expected Mr. Putin to insist on preconditions, such as a halt on weapons supplies to Ukraine for the duration of the cease-fire.
“Russia will very likely say, ‘Yes, but —,’” Mr. Markov said in a phone interview.
Russia’s popular pro-war bloggers on Wednesday did not display much enthusiasm for a cease-fire. Some of them expressed concern that a truce could eventually lead to a broader deal with the United States that, in their view, would betray the original goals of the war and eventually lead to a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.
One blogger, who goes by the name Alex Parker Returns, argued in a post on Wednesday that a peace deal would allow Ukraine “to get off easily and get ready for the next round.”
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.