With Ukraine signed up to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, the pressure is now on the Kremlin to decide whether it too will accept President Donald Trump’s plan to bring the Ukraine war to a halt, albeit a temporary one.
Russian officials are hinting at contacts with US representatives “in the next few days” but have not said whether the terms of the ceasefire, as set out at the US-Ukrainian talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, would be acceptable.
For Moscow, this is a moment of truth and one which may require awkward compromises if it is serious about peace.
The Kremlin has long claimed to be open to negotiations to end the conflict, while insisting it must achieve its ambitious war aims, such as securing control over all annexed areas of Ukraine.
Only last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin strongman who launched this brutal war three years ago, vowed to a group of tearful widows and mothers of killed Russian soldiers that Moscow would never “give in”.
Pro-war Russian hardliners, at times encouraged by the Kremlin, may see a ceasefire as a betrayal.
But a climbdown of some sort may be inevitable.
Even if Russian negotiators can impose their own conditions on the ceasefire – a Ukrainian withdrawal from Kursk, for example, the small pocket of Russia captured by Ukraine, where fighting is now raging – it is hard to imagine its greater territorial demands, yet alone the goal of removing NATO from its western flank, would be met.
This may also become a decisive crossroads in Putin’s oddly warm relationship with Trump who, in exchange for recent concessions and praise, may now expect the Kremlin leader to play ball.
Indeed, “the ball is now in their court,” is precisely what the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the Russians after his talks with Ukrainian officials concluded in Jeddah.
Just days ago, Trump claimed the Russians had “all the cards.” Now, intentionally or not, he may have called Putin’s bluff.