The US government also repeated their previous threats to pull out of peace talks, and said without clear progress they would step back as negotiators.
The Russian president declared a 72-hour truce from May 8 to coincide with the annual Victory Day parade, marking the former Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany, taking place in Moscow the following day.
Putin’s announcement came after Trump claimed that Russia “maybe doesn’t want to stop the war” and that Moscow has been “tapping me along” as the White House pushes for a swift end to the conflict.
The news was also met with derision in Ukraine, as president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was a “new attempt at manipulation” and questioned why such a truce had to wait until May 8.
He questioned why Putin was not agreeing to Ukraine’s call for a ceasefire lasting at least 30 days and starting immediately.
And, surprisingly, it appears the US has sided with Kyiv after months of sympathising with Moscow.
According to Reuters, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday that the US was seeking a “complete, durable ceasefire and an end to the conflict” not a “three-day moment so you can celebrate something else.”
“How we proceed from here is a decision that belongs now to the President,” she continued. “If there is not progress, we will step back as mediators.”
She added that it was now time where “concrete proposals need to be delivered by the two parties on how to end this conflict”.
Trump has refused to say what will happen if there’s no peace deal.
Asked by ABC News on Tuesday if he would then withdraw military aid to Ukraine, Trump said: “I want to leave that as a big, fat secret, because I don’t want to ruin a negotiation.”
The White House suspended aid to Kyiv after Trump’s spat with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, and only resumed it when Ukraine agreed to a 30-day truce.
Trump also told reporters that Putin could be “tapping me along a little bit”, but claimed he still believes the Russian president “would like to stop the war”.
He added: “If it weren’t for me, I think he’d want to take over the whole country, personally.”
Putin did actually try to take over the whole of Ukraine at the start of his invasion in 2022, but Ukrainian forces prevented his Russian troops from taking the capital Kyiv and drove them back. He currently holds a fifth of Ukraine’s land.
Still, Trump did also admit that “Putin went in” and then the “war started”, having previously always blamed Ukraine for initiating the three-year conflict.
Asked if he trusts Putin, Trump said: “I don’t trust a lot of people.”
But he added: “Let’s say he respects me, and I believe because of me he’s not going to take over the whole [country].”
There does appear to be a slight shift in tone within the Trump administration.
US diplomat John Kelley blamed Russia for the ongoing bloodshed at a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, saying Moscow had “regrettably” carried out high-profile strikes “causing needless loss of life, including of innocent civilians”.
Trump previously downplayed one of Putin’s most deadly strikes on Ukrainian civilians by calling it a “mistake”.
Kelley continued: “Right now, Russia has a great opportunity to achieve a durable peace. It is up to the leaders of both these countries to decide whether peace is possible. If both sides are ready to end the war, the United States will fully support their path to a lasting peace.”
The US has been pushing for Ukraine to make some territorial concessions in the name of peace recently, but both Kyiv and its European allies have resisted such calls.
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