Trump Warns Russia Of Sanctions As Moscow Considers Cease-Fire Deal

US President Donald Trump has urged Russia to agree to a 30-day cease-fire, warning he would slap additional sanctions on the country if it refused the US proposal.

"Russia has no way out but cease-fire. If needed we will sanction it, but I hope we won't need to," Trump told reporters at the White House on March 12.

"In a financial sense we can do very unpleasant, very bad things, devastating for Russia, but I don't want to," he said.

His comments come a day after Kyiv agreed to the temporary cease-fire following nine-hours of talks with Trump officials in Saudi Arabia.

Trump has made ending Russia's more than three-year invasion of Ukraine a top priority since taking office less than two months ago, quickly dispatching top officials to Moscow and Kyiv to prepare the groundwork for talks.

He has used Washington's significant leverage over Ukraine -- namely military aid and intelligence sharing -- to get Kyiv to agree to the cease-fire proposal.

But Trump lacks that type of leverage with Russia, which is already under sweeping US and European sanctions.

Experts say Putin will likely seek to drag out talks over a cease-fire to improve his position on the battlefield and hence at the negotiating table to hammer out peace.

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Russians React With Caution To Cease-Fire Proposal With Ukraine

Russian forces are not only advancing in eastern Ukraine but they are also pushing Ukrainian forces out of its Kursk region.

Ukraine carried out a stealth incursion into Kursk in August, seizing a swath of Russian territory it hoped to swap for its own land once peace talks began. Russia has now regained more than half the territory it initially lost in Kursk.

Trump hinted that Ukraine would have to make concessions on land, something more and more experts say is inevitable given Russia's momentum on the battlefield.

"When we talk cease-fire [with Ukraine], we talked land, who's withdrawing -- we discussed a lot of things [with Ukraine]," Trump said.

"We don't want to waste time, people are dying. Russia is not in the best situation now. I hope [Putin] gets a cease-fire."

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the cease-fire agreement and hoped it would be used as a draft for a long-standing peace deal that included security guarantees for Ukraine.

"It's now up to Russia what is next," he said at a March 12 press conference, "if it wants to continue its aggression against Ukraine or not."

On the streets of Kyiv, some Ukrainians told RFE/RL's Current Time that they doubted whether Russia would sign on to, and adhere to, a cease-fire deal.

"I'm not sure what to say, but it all seems implausible, frankly speaking," said one Kyivan man, while a woman in the Ukrainian capital said the cease-fire talks were "meaningless without Russia taking part."

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‘Meaningless Without Russia’: Ukrainians React To Proposed Cease-Fire Deal

Moscow has so far declined to comment on the specifics of the proposal for the 30-day cease-fire, and it's unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has made up his mind on the agreement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow was "carefully studying" the joint US-Ukraine statement issued following the Jeddah talks and will wait to comment until Russian negotiators receive more detailed information from Washington. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who represented the United States at the talks, said Washington "will have contact with Russians" today.

Trump on March 11 said he would soon speak with Putin to secure his commitment. Mike Waltz, the White House national-security adviser, was scheduled to meet his Russian counterpart this week, while Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff also planned to travel to Moscow, possibly to meet Putin.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe held a phone call with Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, late on March 11, the Interfax news agency reported.

Rubio told reporters on March 12 in first comments since leaving the talks in Jeddah that the United States hoped to have a positive answer from Russia toward the cease-fire deal and "strongly urge[s] Russians to end all hostilities.”

Konstantin Kosachev, an influential lawmaker in Russia's upper house of parliament, seemed to imply that Moscow would not simply accept the US-backed ceasefire proposal but attach conditions, taking into account that Russian forces have the momentum on the battlefield.

"Russia is advancing, and therefore it will be different with Russia," Kosachyov said in a Telegram post.

"Any agreements (with all understanding of the need for compromise) will be on our terms, not American," he said. "And this is not boasting, but an understanding that real agreements are still being written there, on the front line. Which Washington should also understand."

Rubio also said Ukraine will need a strong deterrent to prevent future attacks and that Europeans will "need to be involved in this regard." He added that further discussions would need to tackle to topic of the European Union lifting sanctions on the Russian economy.

"I would imagine that in any negotiation, if we get there, hopefully with the Russians, they will raise these European sanctions that have been imposed upon them," Rubio said.

Moscow has so far been against a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated Russia's position during an interview with three right-wing US bloggers that it will under no conditions accept the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine.

Minerals Deal

Washington and Kyiv could sign a framework agreement as early as this week on sharing the revenue generated from Ukraine's mineral resources.

Trump and Zelenskyy intended to sign the deal during their meeting at the Oval Office on February 28. However, the two got into a heated, public exchange over security guarantees for Ukraine and the meeting was abruptly ended without any deal.

Rubio cautioned that he "would not couch [the] minerals deal as a security guarantee." But he added that "if the United States has a vested economic interest that’s generating revenue for our people as well as for the people of Ukraine, we’d have a vested interest in protecting it if it were to be challenged or threatened."

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Ukraine Hit By Russian Drone Strikes Hours After Zelenskyy Agrees To Cease-Fire

The parade of comments come after Russia and Ukraine traded air attacks overnight just hours after Kyiv agreed to accept the cease-fire proposal.

Two Russian missile strikes hit the central Ukrainian city of Kryviy Rih on March 12, killing one person, while a separate attack killed four crew members of a cargo ship near the southern port city of Odesa.

Russia's Defense Ministry said its air-defense systems shot down six drones overnight on March 12, one over Ukraine's Russia-annexed Crimea and five over the Black Sea. The Krymsky Veter Telegram channel reported loud explosions and air-raid sirens over Crimean towns and near Russian military sites.

Russia, meanwhile, said its forces had made further gains in its western region of Kursk as they look to drive out Ukrainian forces who have been occupying part of the Russian territory since last August.

The United States announced after the talks in Saudi Arabia that it would immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and restore military aid to Ukraine, which could be a boost to Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine's battlefield positions have been under heavy pressure, particularly in Russia's Kursk region, where Moscow's forces have launched a push to flush out Kyiv's troops, which had been trying to hold a patch of land as a bargaining chip.

Unconfirmed reports show that Ukraine has begun to draw back units as Russian officials claimed their troops had captured more settlements, including Sudzha, the main population center in the part of Kursk that Ukraine seized.