Moscow rejects short-term Kyiv truce

MOSCOW, Mar 13 (BBC/AFP): An aide to Vladimir Putin dismisses a short-term ceasefire with Kyiv, saying it is "nothing but a temporary respite" for Ukraine. The Kremlin said Thursday that US negotiators were on the way to Russia, as Washington seeks to present its plan for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine.

Kyiv agreed to the US proposal after talks in Saudi Arabia earlier this week, but Moscow has asked for the US side to present details before indicating whether it is acceptable.

"Negotiators are flying in and indeed contacts are scheduled," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. He did not say who was part of the US team.

But the White House said earlier that US President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, a mediator in the Gaza and Ukraine conflict, would be in Moscow this week.

Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov spoke to US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz by phone the day before, Peskov added. Russia wants sanctions to be lifted as part of any deal as it grapples with distortions in its economy.

Peskov said Moscow considered the sanctions "illegal", but would not go into detail about possible talks on the matter ahead of the negotiations. "Let us not get ahead of ourselves," he said.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military fatigues, ordered the swift defeat of Ukrainian forces in western Russia, a signal to the United States that Moscow holds the military initiative as they prepare to discuss a ceasefire on Thursday.

Russia's advances along the front in 2024 and US President Donald Trump's attempt to strike a peace deal to end the three-year war in Ukraine have raised fears that Kyiv, which was backed by the West, could lose the war.

Trump, whose Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit Moscow to meet Putin, said in the White House that he hoped the Kremlin would agree to the US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine said it would support.

Just hours after Trump spoke, the Kremlin published footage of Putin dressed in a green camouflage uniform visiting the Kursk region of western Russia where Ukraine is set to lose its foothold after a lightning offensive by Russian forces.

"Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible timeframe, is to decisively defeat the enemy entrenched in the Kursk region," said Putin, a former KGB officer who very rarely wears military uniform.

"And of course, we need to think about creating a security zone along the state border," said Putin. He did not mention the ceasefire idea.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West in six decades.

In an attempt to divert Russian forces from eastern Ukraine, gain a bargaining chip and embarrass Putin, Ukraine smashed across the border into the Kursk region in August, the biggest attack on Russian territory since the Nazi invasion of 1941.

Ukraine now has a sliver of less than 200 square km (77 square miles) in Kursk, down from 1,300 square km (500 square miles) at the peak of the incursion last summer, according to the Russian military.