After taking a pause of about two days, Russian president Vladimir Putin finally gave his response to Washington’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. Putin may have used the words “we agree” and “this is a good idea,” but his response was effectively a no.

According to Putin, his army is currently performing too well in Ukraine and in the Russian region of Kursk to stop the operations. Throughout the war, Putin consistently portrayed himself as the most peace-loving side in this tragedy, but this time he had to acknowledge that this was not entirely so. That is why Washington’s effort to push Putin into a definitive response on the ceasefire proposal was a smart move.

When Washington announced that the US negotiation team had managed to secure Ukraine’s agreement to a 30-day ceasefire, the narrative then changed to the ball now being in Putin’s court. Putin found himself in a pickle. 

Between Yes and No

His situation was dire not only because he could not immediately say no and expose himself as a hypocrite. He also could not say yes. From a rational perspective, Putin needs a deal to end the war. His army is suffering enormous casualties daily, the economy is flooded with wartime spending resulting in double-digit inflation, and a majority of the Russian populace supports a peaceful solution. A negotiated ceasefire leading to long-term peace would be the best outcome for all parties involved. 

But Putin can’t say yes because any agreement to enter actual negotiations might be perceived as a sign of weakness, potentially threatening regime stability. Among Putin’s loyalists, there is a highly vocal faction of die-hard supporters of Russia’s war against Ukraine who have long suspected their leader lacks the will to win and would settle for a deal with Russia’s enemies. 

“If the wise politician agrees [says yes to the ceasefire proposal], he will thus save the contingent [of Ukrainians] in the Kursk region and give them a chance to regroup. He has once agreed to a similar deal in Syria and prevented Assad from liberating Idlib after a pact with his friend Recep [Tayyip Erdoğan]. And that's how he always does it,” according to one of the so-called “military bloggers” in a highly typical post on a Telegram channel. 

The blogger here refers to the negotiated ceasefire of March 2020, when Putin, after intense talks with Erdoğan, agreed to prevent his proxy, the then-leader of Syria Bashar Assad, from advancing into the Syrian province of Idlib where the rebel forces were taking cover at the time. The forces that ultimately toppled the Assad regime in December 2024 came out of Idlib and went all the way to Damascus. Many Russian hawks thus blame Putin for the fall of the Russia-backed regime in Syria—and Putin knows it.

These ultra-patriots routinely call deals like this “match fixing,” and they suspect Putin of contemplating a similarly self-defeating agreement in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Since these jingoistic patriots are among his most fervent loyalists, Putin cannot openly call them “enemies” or label them as “foreign agents” as he does with anti-war activists who are predominantly in political opposition. However, when Putin feels these loyal critics are starting to threaten regime stability, he fights them ruthlessly. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late boss of the private military group Wagner who staged a mutiny in the summer of 2023, headed one such ultra-loyal faction. Prigozhin argued that Putin was not serious about winning the war, that Putin’s generals were so corrupt that it prevented Russia from winning. In August 2023, Prigozhin died in a suspicious plane crash, which many observers believed was a Kremlin-orchestrated hit. 

Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov), another important war hawk, is now in a Russian jail on extremism charges. A few years ago, Girkin was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for his role in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014. Of course, Girkin was not arrested for that in Russia. Moscow never admitted any involvement in the crash, shielded Girkin from blame, and treated him with respect. But when the “hero” became too vocal in criticizing Putin’s military decisions, he was arrested and convicted. 

Scared of Peace

Many less prominent members of the ultra-patriot faction remain active and publicly scrutinize Putin’s every decision in the war in Ukraine. It is for this group of his loyalists that Putin wore military fatigues when he went to Kursk to receive reports from his generals about the Russian army’s campaign to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. This was the first time he had done so since the beginning of the war. Previously, at similar meetings with the military, he wore a business suit. Putin felt the need to send this militant signal to his loyalists because they are the ones capable of organizing coups—not any remaining moderates in his government or the anti-war crowd. Putin is most scared of his die-hard supporters.

Putin won this round of negotiations by avoiding the appearance of needing an exit strategy. His fear of appearing needy probably helped him. One crucial move Putin made was to frame Ukraine’s agreement to a ceasefire as a plea for mercy from Kyiv. “On the surface, it seems like the Ukrainian side agreed for a ceasefire under American pressure,” Putin said during a joint press conference with Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. “In fact, I am absolutely convinced that the Ukrainian side should have begged the Americans for a ceasefire given the situation on the ground.” 

He reiterated that Russia was looking for a “long-term peace that addresses the root causes of this crisis.” According to Putin’s speeches, and the conditions for the war’s end he previously declared in various documents, the “root causes” are a broad group of factors ranging from the “genocide” of Russians in the Donbas to the “nazification” of Ukraine’s leadership to the expansion of NATO since the 1990s. It would be hard to bargain with Putin along these lines, because he would always be able to tweak or expand his understanding of “root causes” to his advantage. 

For Putin, peace is not just about borders and peacekeeping forces. It is about securing the future of his regime. The Russian side is likely willing to entertain measures that would make Putin less fearful of peace. Should Putin dismantle his war economy, his war hawks will become very hungry. Putin would immediately need to balance the hawks by empowering his civilian elites. By including a prominent banker and a businessman in the meeting in Saudi Arabia, the Russian negotiation team is signaling its interest in exploring economic and business deals that would reinforce Russia’s standing once the war economy is no longer in place.

Putin himself put energy cooperation on the table. “If, say, the US and Russia agree on energy cooperation, a gas pipeline for Europe can be secured, and this will benefit Europe because they will get cheap Russian gas,” Putin said during that same press conference alongside Lukashenko. 

A de-escalation process might include agreements that would bolster Russia’s non-military sectors, perhaps allowing some limited industrial trade and an access to non-military technology. Using Russia’s frozen assets for reconstruction efforts in Ukraine might be tied to a phased reintegration of Russia in the global financial system. Many other economic deals may be calibrated to make the Russian state, and Putin himself, less reliant on the military and security elites.