Ukraine examining how to monitor any ceasefire, foreign minister says
Kyiv has begun examining how to monitor any ceasefire along the frontline of its war with Russia, which runs for over 1,300 kilometers (800 miles), Ukraine's foreign minister said on Friday, as a survey suggested half its citizens oppose ceding land for quick peace.
US President Donald Trump is urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept a ceasefire proposal that Washington negotiated with Ukraine.
Putin on Thursday welcomed the plan in principle but laid out a list of conditions, suggesting there would be no rapid agreement from Moscow, and prompting skepticism in Kyiv.
'In order to avoid possible provocations from the Russian side, we need to be prepared,' Andrii Sybiha told journalists on Friday, announcing that a team would be set up to consider how to monitor any truce.
On Thursday, he had posted on X that 'Putin seeks to continue the war. The rest of his words are just a smokescreen,' echoing the response of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Sybiha was part of the Ukrainian delegation that met with American representatives in Saudi Arabia and said Kyiv supported Washington's proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the full-scale invasion launched by Russia three years ago.
He said the monitoring would be complex, recalling Ukraine's negative experience with truces under the German- and French-backed Minsk process with the insurgency that Russia backed in eastern Ukraine from 2014 onward. Russia now controls around a fifth of Ukraine.
In a survey published on Friday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 50 percent of respondents opposed ceding any territory in exchange for peace and a guarantee of independence, compared to 51 percent in December, while 39 percent were in favor.
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