Ukraine agreed to ceasefire with Russia, hope Putin will agree too: Trump

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed Ukraine agreeing to reach a ceasefire with Russia, and expressed hope that Moscow will respond positively to it too. Trump’s statement came after Kyiv said it was ready to accept a 30-day ceasefire with Moscow, following talks with US representatives in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah on Tuesday.

Expressing grief over the number of soldiers and civilians being killed on both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, which has been raging for over three years now, Trump said that it needed to stop and that a ceasefire was “very important”.

“Ukraine ceasefire, just agreed to it a little while ago. Now we have to go to Russia, and hopefully, President (Vladimir) Putin will also agree to it. People are being killed in the cities as things explode throughout the cities. We want to get that war over with,” Trump said while speaking to reporters on Tuesday.

“That’s a total ceasefire. Ukraine has agreed to it and hopefully Russia will agree. The ceasefire is very important. If we can get Russia to do it, that’ll be great,” he added.

Earlier, Ukraine backed a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and agreed to immediate negotiations with Russia after three years of gruelling war.

During the Jeddah talks with their Ukrainian counterparts on Tuesday, Trump’s advisers pressed for more and said Kyiv agreed to their proposal for a ceasefire to put a halt to a war in which tens of thousands of lives have been lost.

“Today we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was quoted by news agency Reuters as telling reporters after around nine hours of talks.

Following the positive response from Ukraine, the US decided to lift the pause on intelligence sharing with them and to also resume security assistance.

“The President wanted this war to end yesterday. So, our hope is that the Russians will answer ‘yes’ as quickly as possible, so we can get to the second phase of this, which is real negotiations,” Rubio told reporters, referring to Trump.

This is the first engagement between both sides after a shouting match between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump at the Oval Office last month.

“If they say no then we’ll, unfortunately, know what the impediment is to peace here,” Rubio said of Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in February 2022.