“A dizzying turnaround”, according to the British daily The Guardianwho must now be “confronted with reality,” notes the American channel Cnn. Ukraine confirmed, Tuesday, March 11 in Saudi Arabia, its support for a thirty-day ceasefire plan at a Ukrain-American diplomatic meeting, after which President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the United States to “convince Russia” to accept this truce. Washington has in the wake announced Restrictions on Military Aid and Intelligence Sharing in Ukraine, only two weeks after the Ukrainian President’s disastrous visit to the White House.
“This is a positive development which can constitute a step towards a global, fair and lasting peace,” reacted Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, in a post on the social network X.
What will Russia do?
This unexpected change “leaves all the eyes turned to Russia”, comments The Guardian. “But will the chief of the Kremlin Putin play the game?” Asks the German daily Tagesspiegelwhich recalls that so far, the Russian president has refused such truce considerations.
If “the ball is in the Russian camp”, as the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimated in front of the press on Tuesday evening at the end of the game, the Kremlin said this Wednesday morning waiting for “full information” on the part of the United States, adding that a “phone call at the highest level” between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was possible in a “fairly short time”.
The “diplomatic breath is sudden with Ukraine, even if with a Donald Trump in a changing mood involved, we do not know for how long”, therefore quipped The Guardian. CNN even considers that Moscow is now “under pressure to show that it is not an obstacle to the objective of the American president Donald Trump to make peace at almost any price”, “a surreal position to occupy for the Kremlin, after three years of wild assault”. Donald Trump also put himself under pressure, analyzes the Tagesspiegel“with his grandiloquent announcement to quickly end the war”.
The value of the agreement to the field test
But an agreement is far from being sure, estimates the Spanish newspaper El Paisaccording to which its “efficiency” must be “tested on the ground”, and “will depend on the pressure that Trump is ready to exert on Putin”. For the daily newspaper, so far, Washington has only “apparently played the role of mediator between Moscow and kyiv”, even though the “negotiation scheme leans glaringly in favor of Russia”. THE Frankfurter Allgmeine Zeitung Note that it is also risky to know which lever still has Donald Trump to “persuade Putin to commit”, because if the American president threatened Moscow “for the first time a few days ago” speaking of “large -scale sanctions'”, he never specified which.
And CNN to recall that “in the past, Russia has excelled in disinformation, the Maskirovka – deception as a tactical on the battlefield -“. To this are added logistical difficulties to control the respect of the ceasefire: “From the Black Sea to the Belarusian border via the Donbass-the front line is too long”, underlines the Spiegel German. “This is the reason why it exists in Ukraine […] Fear of a ceasefire without adequate guarantees. “
THE Spiegel Go so far as to consider that Vladimir Putin in reality has “no interest in releasing the pressure on Ukraine before having achieved its objectives”, nor in concluding an agreement which would not be in its favor. “Will he refuse the offer? Will he play the watch?” Asks the magazine. The first Kremlin announcements, in any case, seem to bend in this direction.