Latest News: US hopes for Ukraine peace deal by April 20 as Putin seems in no hurry….See More

The US is still hoping a broad ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine can be reached within weeks, even as the warring sides continue attacks and there are signs ahead of talks scheduled for the coming days that the Kremlin is in no hurry to reach a deal.

The White House aims for a truce agreement by April 20, which this year is Easter in both the Western and Orthodox churches, but recognizes that timeline may slip given the large gaps between the positions of the two sides, according to people familiar with the planning. They asked not to be identified to discuss matters that aren’t public.

Trump has pledged to deliver a quick resolution to the three-year-old war that started before he took office, but progress has been limited. US officials will meet separately with Russian and Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for the first such parallel negotiations since the early weeks of Russia’s invasion.

I believe we’re going to pretty soon have a full ceasefire,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday when asked about attacks continuing despite an agreement to limit strikes on energy infrastructure that he had announced after a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

On Saturday, Trump said efforts to stop the war from escalating further were “under control” and touted his “good” relationships with the leaders of both Russia and Ukraine.

Russia has set out maximalist demands for any agreement, including an end to arms supplies for Ukraine, a position that Kyiv and its allies have rejected. The White House, which briefly halted the vital weapons deliveries earlier this month to put pressure on Ukraine, hasn’t agreed to any limits so far, the people said.

We are working for a ceasefire and a lasting peace,” White House spokesman Brian Hughes said. “We won’t have the terms of discussions or timing be played out in the media.”

European officials fear that Trump’s desire for a diplomatic triumph will lead him to sacrifice Ukraine’s interests, agreeing to terms that leave the country vulnerable to future Russian attacks. They argue that Putin is playing for time to extract more concessions from Trump and more advances on the battlefield.

So far, Russia is imitating the negotiations, talking about a possible peace and possible ceasefire, but they are not even ready to keep the ceasefire as promised, and to strike critical infrastructure,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told Bloomberg Television in Brussels Friday.

Russia continues waves of drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, killing civilians, including at least three in a strike on the capital early Sunday morning. Ukraine has also kept up air assaults on Russia, including strikes on a military airbase and a command center.

The Saudi talks will cover technical details of implementing and monitoring the 30-day truce on strikes against energy sites that the Russian and Ukrainian presidents had agreed to in separate phone calls with Trump last week. The discussions will also focus on potentially expanding the ceasefire to cover shipping in the Black Sea.

The meetings will be the first to involve Russia and Ukraine in parallel talks on ending the conflict since the sides met in Istanbul in March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion, for negotiations that failed to reach an agreement. Turkey and the United Nations mediated talks on continuing a grain-export deal from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in 2022-2023 that collapsed when Russia withdrew.