The United States has for the first time shifted the pressure to Russia in President Trump’s push for a ceasefire in Ukraine, after securing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s support for a 30-day truce in the war.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio came out of talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday saying the geopolitical ball was now in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s court.
Steve Witkoff, special envoy and top Trump negotiator with Russia, was reportedly planning a meeting with Putin as soon as this week. Senate Republicans expressed doubt Wednesday that Russia would back the ceasefire and warned that Putin was not an honest broker.
“I am extremely skeptical that Russia will accept the ceasefire and I am very doubtful they want to end this war. Zelensky has passed the test of wanting peace. It is now up to Putin to show his cards,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote in a post on the social platform X.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) shared a similar skepticism.
“I personally am skeptical, because [Putin’s] ideologically driven of wanting to restore the Russian empire and he’s shown that he doesn’t respect any agreements,” Cornyn said
“I think [a ceasefire is] kind of a necessary prerequisite to further more serious discussions. It’s not an end in and of itself, but at least hopefully people aren’t being killed, so that’s a good thing.”
Trump signaled on Wednesday that he could exert pressure on Putin if Russia holds back from joining a ceasefire agreement.
“I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia, I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace,” he said, echoing past threats to tariff and isolate Moscow economically.
Putin is likely to assert his own demands in the deal, dragging out the process toward a ceasefire, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
“What we want to do is have the best possible negotiating position for Ukraine because we know we can’t trust Russia,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“We’ve seen that. What we need is to hold Vladimir Putin accountable for what he’s done.”
Zelensky helped repair ruptured U.S. relations when he agreed Tuesday to accept the terms of an immediate ceasefire — also securing the resumption of American military assistance and intelligence sharing, which Trump had cut off following a contentious Oval Office meeting late last month.
Zelensky discussed the terms of the 30-day ceasefire proposal in his nightly address to the country: a halt in fighting across the entirety of the front line — an estimated 600 miles — and stopping missile, drone and bomb attacks, including in the Black Sea.
Russia has only ramped up attacks on Ukraine since Trump began his public push for peace talks about a month ago.
Trump said U.S. officials were on their way to Russia and a response could come “very soon.”
“I’ve gotten some positive messages. But a positive message means nothing,” he said.
Graham said he is introducing “bone-breaking sanctions and tariffs” legislation against Russia to compel its commitment to any ceasefire deal and negotiations.
“If they [Russia] do not pursue the ceasefire with the same vigor as Ukraine, there will be hell to pay,” he said.
Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, a Washington-based think-tank, said it’s in Putin’s interest to accept the ceasefire and take advantage of warming relations with Trump, but cautioned that Putin has shown no shift “in his maximalist aims against Ukraine.”
“The Kremlin has a nasty habit of violating ceasefires as seen with the Minsk Accords,” she said, referring to the 2014 and 2015 ceasefire agreements that sought to halt Russia’s fighting on eastern Ukrainian territory it invaded and occupied. Negotiations over implementation of the agreements lasted years until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“If Russia rejects the ceasefire proposal — or accepts it only to violate it — the key question is how President Trump will respond once burned.”
The rapprochement between the U.S. and Ukraine has eased relations with Europe, where officials are largely supportive of the Trump administration’s latest move in the talks.
“The ball, as always, is in Russia’s court,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, wrote in a post on X.
Lithuania’s defense minister, Dovilė Šakalienė, warned that the only way to negotiate with Russia is with a gun on the table.
“In my opinion, the only efficient diplomacy with Russia was what Al Capone said: ‘The only good negotiation is when you have a gun on the table,'” she said in an interview with Fox News last week. “So that’s probably the kind of diplomacy that would work with Russia.”
Trump threatened banking sanctions and tariffs against Russia if it bucks opportunities for peace.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) said Trump could also use oil prices as leverage to get Putin to the table.
“That’s the main source of funding for Russia right now. If you start cutting off their income, they’ll have a more difficult time funding war,” he said. “So I think the president will probably consider ideas like that to put pressure on Putin to come to the table.”
Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Putin would be “a fool” not to carefully listen to Trump’s words.
“I know the president really well. He’s a really, really good negotiator and he has — when you read these stories, they talk about ‘so and so has the cards, so and so has the cards,'” Risch said.
“I’ll tell you who has got the cards. That’s Donald Trump.”
