By Tom Balmforth and Max Hunder
LONDON/KYIV (Reuters) – By agreeing to Washington’s ceasefire proposal, Ukraine achieved some major short-term objectives, not least salvaging a tattered relationship with President Donald Trump, though the underlying issues at the heart of the conflict with Russia remain unresolved.
Washington resumed military aid and intelligence sharing in a boost for Kyiv on Tuesday after more than eight hours of talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah about ending the war with Russia.
After Ukraine agreed to a U.S. proposal of an interim 30-day ceasefire, the United States said it will take the offer to Russia, putting the ball back in Moscow’s court and easing what had been mounting pressure on Kyiv.
Reuters spoke to a senior member of the Ukrainian delegation in Jeddah, two senior former officials, a lawmaker, a source close to the government and a military analyst for this article.
The bilateral meeting was the first since Zelenskiy’s fraught encounter with Trump in the Oval Office last month.
The Ukrainian delegation entered the talks with several negotiating positions, including the idea of a “truce lite” that would have involved a ceasefire in the air and at sea, said Ihor Zhovkva, a senior Ukrainian official who took part in the talks.
During the meeting, U.S. officials proposed a broader ceasefire, he said. The Ukrainians agreed after a pause in talks allowed the delegations to consult their leaders, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters on Wednesday.
“For us, it was very important to have the understanding that the truce would go along with two very important things: an immediate lifting of the pause of military assistance and intelligence sharing,” Zhovkva, Zelenskiy’s foreign affairs adviser, told Reuters by telephone.
“It was done immediately,” he said, describing these steps among the “most significant results” of the talks and joint statement.
He praised the overall “constructive” atmosphere of the meeting that he said went well beyond repairing bilateral relations to coordinated action between equal partners.
The talks did not include much about territory, with the ceasefire a first step in the peace process, he said.
Russia holds just under one-fifth of Ukraine.
“Ukraine will never cede any territories. It’s very simple. You cannot have this statement or declaration, no one can have it because it needs a change of the constitution,” Zhovkva said.
FUNDAMENTALS UNCHANGED
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a military analyst who was defence minister from 2019 to 2020, noted the marked improvement in U.S. relations.
But he cautioned that the challenging underlying fundamentals remained, weeks after the United States began its direct diplomatic engagement with Russia and upended U.S. policy on the war.
“We still don’t understand what Russia will want in exchange for peace. We still don’t know whether the U.S. will take the Ukrainian position or the position that Ukraine’s opinion is basically not as important as Russia’s,” he said.
Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at the Russia and Eurasia programme at London-based think tank Chatham House, flagged that and other risks.
“Putting in place a cementing of the front lines in their current position without any long-term guarantee of ensuring that the war will actually come to an end, risks rewarding Russia by making the current zone of control permanent and freezing the conflict in place as opposed to resolving it,” he said.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was awaiting details from Washington about the ceasefire proposal, while senior Moscow sources said a deal would have to take account of Russia’s advances and address its concerns.
But a source close to the Ukrainian government said the mood in the Zelenskiy camp after the talks was upbeat and that there was a feeling Russia had been caught off guard by the ceasefire proposal.
“It’s a strong check on the chess board,” the source said.
A former senior Ukrainian security official who requested anonymity said things had so far developed predictably in terms of a phased peace process.
“However, it is likely that Russia will derail the agreement, and we will have to watch the American reaction. The Russians may offend Trump with their outbursts. And then we will have a chance for strong arms assistance.”
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Reuters TV in London, Max Hunder and Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv; Editing by Christian Lowe and Rod Nickel)
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