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Lukashenko: Russia Offered a Ceasefire if West Stops Bombing Russian Cities

July 5—A backchannel message was provided to U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Gen. (ret.) Keith Kellogg, when he met in Belarus on June 21 with its President, Aleksandr Lukashenko, that negotiations over the hostilities in Ukraine could proceed by pulling back the escalatory step (from last year) of allowing bombing Russian cities with Western weapons. This differs from the U.K.-France-German position of the “Coalition of the Willing,” that the first step in Ukrainian peace deal must be a 30-day ceasefire.

According to his account yesterday, he had told Kellogg that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants, as a first step, an end to Kyiv striking Russian cities with drones and the West’s cruise missiles, and ATACMS missile systems provided Ukraine by NATO and the United States. Then Putin would agree to a ceasefire, he claimed. Lukashenko said he told Kellogg: “Let them tell their client [NATO's Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to stop strikes against Russia. Then we could agree. That’s the position I relayed to the American and asked him, ‘Is there something wrong with it?’ He said, ‘We are working in that direction.’ You do that. That would be a good first step toward stopping this fratricidal war. But I don’t believe they {NATO and Ukraine] want to end this war.”

Kellogg responded, also yesterday, that Lukashenko’s quote had been taken out of context. He stated on X: “Any limitation on Kyiv’s conduct was conditional on reciprocal action by Moscow. At no point did I make comments related to Ukraine’s prosecution of the war outside of a total ceasefire.”

If Lukashenko’s account is correct, it appears that Moscow was offering a fairly easy step to the requested ceasefire. Regardless, it remains unclear whether Washington’s announcement yesterday of a halt to certain military supplies—the provision of missiles for Patriot air defense systems, precision artillery rounds, Hellfire and other missiles that Ukraine launches from its F-16 fighters and drones—has any connection. Other sources say that it might be connected to another of Putin's demands for a ceasefire—that the U.S. halt shipments of supplies to Ukraine during a ceasefire so that they could not rearm forward positions during a truce.

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