Live Updates: U.S. Negotiators Head to Moscow to Discuss Ukraine

“After we receive this information — not through the press but through bilateral dialogue — then the time will come for thinking it over and formulating a position,” Mr. Peskov said.

As recently as January, Mr. Putin had rejected the idea of a temporary cease-fire in Ukraine. But after a month in which President Trump turned American foreign policy on its head and Russian forces made progress in a key battle, the Kremlin now appears keen at least to entertain the 30-day cease-fire proposal made by Ukraine and the United States on Tuesday.

Also on Thursday, Mr. Putin is expected to hold a news conference with the visiting president of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Mr. Putin could make his first public remarks about the 30-day cease-fire offer in that news conference, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.

Here’s what else to know:

• Fighting in Kursk: Moscow’s forces have intensified a campaign to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region of Russia, the border area where Kyiv’s troops occupied several hundred square miles of territory in a surprise incursion last August. On Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that Russian forces had retaken Sudzha, the main population center in the region that was captured by Ukraine last year. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine’s military.

• Putin’s dilemma: The Russian leader has seen a dizzying reversal in his geopolitical fortunes over the last month as Mr. Trump realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor and antagonized U.S. allies. But the emergence of a joint cease-fire proposal from the United States and Ukraine complicates things for Mr. Putin, deepening the tension between his desires for a far-reaching victory in Ukraine and for close ties with Mr. Trump.

• On the front line: Dressed in fatigues, Mr. Putin visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.

Still, Ushakov said he was simply relaying his personal point of view and that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was expected to weigh in on the matter and give a “concrete assessment” today during a news conference with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus.

“Negotiators are indeed flying in, and contacts are indeed planned,” Mr. Peskov said. “We won’t get ahead of ourselves — we’ll talk about it afterward.”

Shortly after Mr. Peskov’s remarks, Russian news agencies reported that a plane frequently used by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, had landed in Moscow from Qatar. This would be Mr. Witkoff’s second visit to Russia in weeks. Last month, he met with Mr. Putin for several hours when he came to Moscow to finalize the prisoner exchange that freed Marc Fogel, an American schoolteacher jailed in Russia.

Ukraine has said it would back a temporary cease-fire if Russia did the same.

Mr. Peskov said Thursday that Russia would only offer its response to the cease-fire proposal after talks with the United States in which American officials would lay out that plan in more detail. Mr. Trump has said that he planned to speak to Mr. Putin directly this week.

“After we receive this information — not through the press but through bilateral dialogue — then the time will come for thinking it over and formulating a position,” Mr. Peskov said.

Also on Thursday, Mr. Putin is expected to meet the authoritarian president of neighboring Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. The two close allies will hold a news conference in which Mr. Putin could make his first public remarks about the 30-day cease-fire offer, Tass, Russia’s state news agency, reported.

The flurry of diplomacy came as Moscow’s forces intensified a campaign to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region of Russia, the border area where Kyiv’s troops occupied several hundred square miles of territory in a surprise incursion last August.

Dressed in a green camouflage uniform, Mr. Putin sat at a desk with maps spread out in front of him, according to photos released by the Kremlin. He appeared with Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.

In video footage released by Russian state media, Mr. Putin praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region. He called on the troops to seize the territory for good from Ukrainian forces, who have been occupying portions of the Russian border region since last summer. Kyiv had hoped to use the territory as a bargaining chip in peace talks.

The Russian leader also demanded that Ukrainian forces taken prisoner in the region be treated and prosecuted as terrorists under Russian law. General Gerasimov said more than 400 Ukrainian troops had been captured in the operations.

“People who are on the territory of the Kursk region, committing crimes here against the civilian population and opposing our armed forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation, are terrorists,” Mr. Putin said.

He added that “foreign mercenaries” do not fall under the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of prisoners of war. The conflict, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has drawn foreign fighters. This month, Russia sentenced a 22-year-old British man who had volunteered for the Ukrainian Army to 19 years in prison on terrorism and mercenary charges, after his capture in the Kursk region last year.

Russian forces stepped up an offensive to push Ukrainian troops out of the region this week, as Kyiv reeled from the Trump administration’s decision last week to freeze U.S. intelligence and military assistance to Ukraine after an explosive confrontation in the Oval Office between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

After talks on Tuesday with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration announced that it would resume the assistance.

By then, Russian forces were already well on their way to taking back Sudzha, the main population center in the Kursk region that was captured by Ukraine last year.

For months, Ukraine’s occupation of Russian territory has been a sore point for Moscow, which bolstered its forces with North Korean soldiers in an attempt to take back the land.

Russian officials boasted of a breakthrough attack in Kursk last Saturday, when, they said, some 800 fighters traveled about 10 miles through a disused gas pipeline to carry out a surprise attack on the Ukrainian rear.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement that Ukrainian forces were moving to “more advantageous positions” if necessary and would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.” He added, “In the most difficult situations, my priority has been and remains the preservation of Ukrainian soldiers’ lives.”

Mr. Putin has said that any temporary cease-fire or truce will only provide an advantage to Ukrainian forces, who are on the back foot on the battlefield and could use the reprieve to replenish personnel.

Russia has demanded a broader security agreement backed by the West, including a guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to the NATO military alliance, as well as other commitments that risk eroding Ukraine’s sovereignty.

“We do not need a truce,” Mr. Putin said during his annual news briefing in December. “We need peace: a long-term and lasting peace with guarantees for the Russian Federation and its citizens.”

Marc Santora contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Mr. Rubio also downplayed any notion that he would encounter hostility from American allies because of President Trump’s recent tariffs. And he said he expected to have cordial talks with Canadian officials, despite Mr. Trump’s threat to annex Canada and make it the 51st state. The president has also imposed coercive tariffs on Canada.

“That’s not what we’re going to discuss at the G7, and that’s not what we’re going to be discussing in our trip here,” he said. “They’re the host nation, and I mean, we have a lot of other things we work on together.”

“It is not a meeting about how we’re going to take over Canada,” he added. He landed in Quebec City on Wednesday afternoon, as other foreign ministers were also flying in.

Mr. Rubio and Michael Waltz, the White House national security adviser, met for hours on Tuesday with Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to work out how to start a negotiation process with Russia to end the war. Hostilities began in 2014 when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, and then launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.

After the meeting on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said they had agreed to an American proposal for a 30-day interim cease-fire. After berating the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the White House, Mr. Trump withheld U.S. weapons and intelligence aid to the Ukrainians to try to force them into negotiations. U.S. officials said after the Jeddah meeting that aid had restarted.

Mr. Rubio said U.S. officials planned to “have contact” with Russian officials on Wednesday to discuss the proposed cease-fire.

“If their response is no, it would be highly unfortunate, and it’d make their intentions clear,” he added.

Mr. Rubio said that when he, Mr. Waltz and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, met with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia last month, the Russians appeared open to the idea of a settlement to the war. “They expressed a willingness under the right circumstances, which they did not define, to bring an end to this conflict,” he said.

Mr. Rubio said one of his main goals at the Group of 7 meeting was corralling the other countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, all supporters of Ukraine — to have a united front on encouraging peace talks. The meeting begins with a reception in Quebec City on Wednesday night.

He said a “perfect statement” to be issued from the meeting “would be that the United States has done a good thing for the world in bringing this process forward, and now we all eagerly await the Russian response and urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities, so people will stop dying, so bullets will stop flying and so a process can begin to find a permanent peace.”

Ukrainian officials want to ensure several issues are addressed in any talks, he said, including exchanges of prisoners of war, the release of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia and humanitarian assistance.

When asked what was the American position on Ukraine’s request for security guarantees to help deter any future Russian assaults, Mr. Rubio simply said deterrence would be part of peace talks.

“There’s no way to have an enduring peace without the deterrence piece being a part of it,” he said, adding that any commercial minerals agreement between the United States and Ukraine would help enrich Ukraine, but was not a deterrent against Russian aggression.

Mr. Trump has insisted that the United States and Ukraine sign such an agreement, suggesting that investment by American companies in Ukraine would help stave off a hostile Russia.

Mr. Rubio said European promises to provide security to Ukraine would be part of peace talks as well. He said it was unclear when those nations would become more involved in negotiations, though European countries have insisted they would be central players in a settlement, if one were to happen.

“I would imagine that in any negotiation, if we get there hopefully with the Russians, that they will raise the European sanctions that have been imposed upon them,” Mr. Rubio said. “So I think that the issue of European sanctions are going to be on the table, not to mention what happens with the frozen assets and the like.”

The foreign ministers gathered in Quebec City expect to discuss the war, but Mr. Trump’s hostility to U.S. alliances, his alignment with Russia and his unpredictable tariff actions have created a host of issues that the diplomats intend to raise.

Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump was imposing tariffs not to punish other nations but “to develop a domestic capability” for manufacturing, especially in defense industries.

Canadian officials, including the incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, are taking reciprocal actions on the tariffs and grappling with Mr. Trump’s other threats. Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump’s statements on annexation were based on both economic and security concerns.

“What he said is they should become the 51st state from an economic standpoint,” Mr. Rubio said. “He says if they became the 51st state, we wouldn’t have to worry about the border and fentanyl coming across because now we would be able to manage that. He’s made an argument that it’s their interest to do so. Obviously, the Canadians don’t agree, apparently.”

Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday that the Kremlin was “carefully studying” the outcome of Tuesday’s talks between the United States and Ukraine, and their call for a monthlong cease-fire.

He said he expected the United States to inform Russia in the coming days of “the details of the negotiations that took place and the understandings that were reached.” He raised the possibility of another phone call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, signaling that the Kremlin saw the cease-fire proposal as just a part of a broader flurry of diplomacy.

Late Wednesday, Mr. Putin sought to show he was in control of events by donning military fatigues and holding a televised meeting with his top military officials charged with pushing Ukraine out of Russia’s Kursk region, where Russia has made progress in recent weeks. He directed his troops to defeat Ukraine in the region “in the shortest possible time,” a move that, if successful, would deny Ukraine a key point of leverage in any negotiations with Russia.

Mr. Putin has seen a dizzying reversal in his geopolitical fortunes over the last month as Mr. Trump realigned American foreign policy in Russia’s favor, antagonized U.S. allies and excoriated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House.

But the emergence of a joint cease-fire proposal from the United States and Ukraine complicates things for Mr. Putin. It deepens the tension between his desires for a far-reaching victory in Ukraine and for close ties with Mr. Trump.

While Mr. Trump says he wants to end the war as soon as possible, Mr. Putin has signaled he will not stop fighting until he extracts major concessions from the West and from Kyiv, including a pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO and that the alliance will reduce its presence in Central and Eastern Europe.

On Jan. 20, when he congratulated Mr. Trump on his inauguration, Mr. Putin made clear that the goal of any Ukraine talks must “not be a short cease-fire, not some kind of respite.” Russia, he said, sought “a long-term peace based on respect for the legitimate interests of all people, all nations who live in this region.”

Analysts say Mr. Putin’s opposition to a temporary cease-fire stemmed from the simple calculation that with Russian forces gaining on the battlefield, Moscow would only give up its leverage by stopping the fighting without winning concessions.

But a Feb. 12 phone call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, and the White House’s subsequent alignment with Russia at the United Nations and elsewhere, may have affected Mr. Putin’s calculus by making him more eager to stay on Mr. Trump’s good side, analysts say.

That sets up a delicate balancing act for the Kremlin.

Ilya Grashchenkov, a political analyst in Moscow, said the Kremlin could be tempted to accept a truce that would be “tactically unfavorable but strategically favorable” in order to “show that it’s a peacemaker.”

While Russians were not present at Tuesday’s talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration has kept up its engagement with the Kremlin. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, on Tuesday, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency said on Wednesday.

Steve Witkoff, the envoy for Mr. Trump who met with Mr. Putin for several hours last month, plans to return to Russia in the coming days, according to two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss internal plans. Mr. Trump on Tuesday said that he thought he would speak with Mr. Putin this week, and he told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that his negotiators were en route.

“People are going to Russia right now as we speak,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting with Ireland’s prime minister. “And hopefully we can get a cease-fire from Russia.”

In a sign of Moscow’s continuing charm offensive directed at the Trump camp, Russia’s foreign ministry released a 90-minute interview on Wednesday that the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, gave to three American video bloggers, including the former Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano.

Mr. Lavrov, speaking English, praised the Trump administration for reversing the Democrats’ “departure from Christian values” and said Russia was ready for the “normal relations” that the United States was offering.

“It certainly is not impossible that the Russians would accept this,” Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst at the RAND Corporation, said of the 30-day offer. “Not because they want an unconditional, temporary cease-fire, but because they now have a stake in relations with Washington.”

Mr. Putin’s calculus could also be affected by Russia’s progress in recent days in pushing Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, the Russian border region where Ukraine occupied several hundred square miles of territory in a surprise incursion last August.

Mr. Zelensky had said he planned to use that land as a bargaining chip in future talks, but the Kremlin signaled that it would refuse to negotiate so long as Ukraine held the territory.

With the Kursk region mostly back in Russian hands, Mr. Putin no longer risks losing face by agreeing to a cease-fire that would leave Ukraine in control of an area of Russian territory, said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst in Moscow.

A further incentive to agree, Mr. Markov said, was to make sure that Russia “doesn’t look like a war maniac” in the eyes of non-Western countries that have avoided imposing sanctions on Moscow. But, he said, he expected Mr. Putin to insist on preconditions, such as a halt on weapons supplies to Ukraine for the duration of the cease-fire.

“Russia will very likely say, ‘Yes, but —,’” Mr. Markov said in a phone interview.

Russia’s popular pro-war bloggers on Wednesday did not display much enthusiasm for a cease-fire. Some of them expressed concern that a truce could eventually lead to a broader deal with the United States that, in their view, would betray the original goals of the war and eventually lead to a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.

One blogger, who goes by the name Alex Parker Returns, argued in a post on Wednesday that a peace deal would allow Ukraine “to get off easily and get ready for the next round.”

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.