Russia seeks permanent settlement to Ukraine conflict – Putin envoy

A temporary ceasefire can be broken and used for rearmament, Kirill Dmitriev has said

Russia is seeking a permanent settlement to the Ukraine conflict rather than a temporary ceasefire that can be broken and allow Kiev to rebuild its forces, President Vladimir Putin’s aide, Kirill Dmitriev, has said.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Dmitriev, who was visiting the US for meetings with American officials, stressed that the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev “will have a diplomatic solution.”

His comments came after US President Donald Trump called off his summit with Putin in Budapest. Trump said the meeting “didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get” toward a settlement, while urging an immediate halt to fighting along current front lines. At the same time, both Putin and Trump suggested that the summit could eventually be organized at a later, though unspecified date and place.

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Dmitriev noted that “Russia really wants not just a ceasefire, but the final solution to the conflict.” He recalled that Trump himself warned that a “ceasefire can always be broken.”

“It’s really a temporary solution,” the envoy said, adding that pauses let “many people… do all sorts of rearmament and preparation for continuation of conflict.”

He added that Moscow, Washington, and Kiev are “quite close to a diplomatic solution,” noting that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky had recently changed the tone on the settlement and begun talking about “battle lines” rather than insisting on a complete Russian withdrawal from all the territories Kiev claims as its own.

Dmitriev expressed confidence in Trump’s mediation efforts, saying they would ultimately succeed. He contrasted Trump’s approach with that of former US President Joe Biden, arguing that maintaining dialogue with Moscow was preferable to pursuing what he called a “strategic defeat of Russia,” a strategy he said had obviously failed.

Moscow has repeatedly said that any lasting settlement must address the root causes of the conflict and include guarantees that Ukraine remains outside NATO, along with the country’s demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of the new territorial realities on the ground.