Washington, Moscow discuss next steps on Ukraine war

Both Russia, Ukraine come under air attacks

March 17, 2025 00:00:00

Firefighters work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike in Chernihiv of Ukraine Sunday — Reuters

WASHINGTON, Mar 16 (AFP/Reuters): The top US and Russian diplomats discussed Saturday the "next steps" to end the war in Ukraine, hours after Kyiv's allies agreed to exert pressure on Moscow.

Despite recent tensions between US President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv has agreed in principle to a US-brokered 30-day unconditional ceasefire-if Moscow halts its attacks in eastern Ukraine.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has not, however, agreed to any truce, instead setting conditions that were beyond what was called for in the US agreement with Ukraine. The ceasefire proposal by Trump's team comes as Russia has momentum in many areas of the front in Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a call on Saturday, "discussed next steps", State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has stressed his desire to end the three-year-old conflict, and has made a spectacular rapprochement with Putin.

The statement gave no details on when the next round of US-Russia talks hosted by Saudi Arabia would begin.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued aerial attacks on each other, inflicting injuries and damages, officials said early on Sunday, as the fate of a proposed ceasefire to the three-year-old war remained uncertain.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he supported in principle Washington's proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.

Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on the battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.

The Russian defence ministry said on Sunday that its air defence units destroyed a total of 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Of those, 16 were downed over the southwestern region of Voronezh, nine over the territory of the Belgorod region and the rest over the Rostov and Kursk regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.