Lisa Haseldine

US special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Russia this morning to meet with Vladimir Putin, as Donald Trump ploughs ahead with his plan to secure a peace deal in Ukraine by hook or by crook. This is the pair’s fourth meeting in nearly as many months. Putin and Witkoff are expected to discuss Trump’s final proposal for a ceasefire in the conflict, which is believed to include American recognition of Russian control over Crimea, along with all territories occupied by Moscow since February 2022, a ban on Ukraine joining Nato and the lifting of all sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014.

At 4 p.m. UK time today, Russian troops were instructed to temporarily lay down their weapons in Ukraine. The order, issued by Russian president Vladimir Putin to mark the Easter weekend, is nominally in force for 30 hours until midnight on Easter Monday. ‘We are proceeding on the assumption that the Ukrainian side will follow our example,’ he said. All military operations, the President added, would supposedly be halted during that time period. From Putin’s statement it doesn’t look as if this ceasefire was discussed with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, or anyone from his administration, before he announced it. But it appears that for the rest of this weekend – maybe, just maybe – quiet will reign on the battlefields of Ukraine.

With just under a week to go until the supposed Easter deadline, it appears that Donald Trump is no closer to securing a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. The President’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff travelled to St Petersburg yesterday for talks on ‘aspects of a Ukraine settlement’ with Vladimir Putin. The fact that neither produced a read-out of the four and a half hour meeting afterwards implies that, yet again, Trump’s representative has come away without having achieved much meaningful progress. While the Americans may have hoped yesterday’s meeting would perhaps bring Putin closer to the negotiating table with Ukraine, the Russians were clearly under no such illusion.

When Vladimir Putin launched his bid to be elected as Russia’s president in 2000, he had already been in the role for a month and a half. His predecessor Boris Yeltsin had stepped down on 31 December 1999, appointing his young prime minister in his place to prevent political opponents from prosecuting him and his associates – on well-founded grounds – for corruption. At the time, less than a decade after the collapse of the USSR, Russia had fair elections, freedom of expression, a thriving press and a growing economy. A quarter of a century on, all of that has gone. Today marks exactly 25 years since Putin was elected President of Russia for the first time.

Vladimir Putin is apparently open to a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine. But is he really? Just like that, the response that America, Ukraine and its Western allies had been waiting for has arrived. Speaking this afternoon in a joint press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the Russian President commented for the first time on America’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the conflict. ‘We agree with the proposal to stop military actions,’ he said. The truce, he said, should lead to ‘long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of the crisis’.  As with many statements which turn out to be too good to be true, the Russian President then followed this with a ‘but’: ‘There must be nuances,’ he added.

Keir Starmer has reassured the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of Britain’s ‘commitment to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to Nato’ membership. The Prime Minister made the comments in a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart this morning. This appears to be a rebuttal of comments made by senior members of US President Donald Trump’s team stating that Nato membership for Kyiv in the aftermath of the war with Russia is unrealistic.  Starmer’s pledge to Zelensky comes after the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth declared on Wednesday during a defence summit in Brussels that ‘the United States does not believe that Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement’ to end the conflict with Russia.