When Ukraine proposed a temporary ceasefire earlier this month, which would have halted hostilities in the air and at sea for 30 days, Moscow emphatically rejected the idea. “Firm agreements on a final settlement are needed,” Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry’s spokeswoman, said on 6 March. “Without all that, some kind of respite is absolutely unacceptable.” With Russian forces making gains on the battlefield and Western unity fracturing, Vladimir Putin had little incentive to seek an end to the fighting.
Yet the Russian leader’s calculus in response to a new 30-day ceasefire, provisionally agreed by Ukraine after talks with US officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 11 March, is much more complicated.
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