The Decibel - Limited ceasefire brokered in Ukraine-Russia war

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to a limited ceasefire with Ukraine after a discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump. The deal, also supported by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, would mean Russian and Ukrainian troops will stop targeting energy and infrastructure for 30 days.This ceasefire plan falls short of the original proposal, which would’ve seen an immediate 30-day halt to all fighting. Further talks are planned, but at this point, there are still a number of contentious issues – including security guarantees – to be negotiated.The Globe’s Europe correspondent, Paul Waldie, reported from Ukraine. He’ll talk about the call between Trump and Putin, the perspective from Kyiv right now, and where the peace talks are headed from here.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

On Tuesday, a 90-minute phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin included discussions of a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Well, I mean, it's significant because Trump, of course, is very eager to try and broker some kind of a peace deal and ceasefire, but we're still a long way from that given what happened on the phone call this morning. That's Paul Walde, the Globe's Europe correspondent. Putin agreed to a limited ceasefire. Russian and Ukrainian troops will stop targeting energy and infrastructure for 30 days.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said he would also support this. But this ceasefire plan fell short of the one negotiated last week by U.S. and Ukrainian officials. That would have seen an immediate 30-day halt to all fighting. Further talks are planned, but at this point, there are still a lot of contentious issues to be negotiated. So today, Paul is on the show to talk about the call between Trump and Putin, what it's like in Ukraine right now, and where the peace talks are headed from here. I'm Maynika Raman-Wellms and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Paul, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's been a very long day for you there. is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's been a very long day for you there. No, no problem. So, Paul, we're talking to you close to 6 p.m. Eastern Time, 11 p.m. your time on Tuesday night. You are in Poland right now and you just left Ukraine. What do we know about what actually happened on this call between Trump and Putin? Well, as with these calls all the time, we're getting what the American side is saying

happened on the call and what the Russian side is saying happened on the call. And in this occasion, the Russian side's got a little bit more detail than the American side does. But basically, they both agreed that Putin has said he will accept a 30-day ceasefire, but only in terms of stopping attacks on energy and infrastructure.

And of course, Russia has been attacking Ukraine's power infrastructure for three years plus now. And the Ukrainians have been going after Russian oil, depots, and gas facilities as well. So Putin has said they should stop doing that. Now that is a long way from what was announced about a week ago in Jeddah, which Ukraine agreed to right away. And that was a ceasefire for 30 days, stopping all fighting, not just long range air attacks. So Putin has kind of come part way and I think Trump is trying to hail this as a bit of a victory, but there's still an awful lot of details to work out. And that's what they're supposed to do now is thrash out how this ceasefire would work, whether they could extend it to the Black Sea and make it kind of a maritime ceasefire,

and then get into the nitty gritty of real peace talks. You mentioned the conversations last week in Jeddah. That's in Saudi Arabia. These were conversations between the US and the Ukrainian side. Can I ask you about Trump's relationship with Putin? Does the relationship between the two of them change the tone of the negotiations at this point?

Well, I think it does, but going into this call, a lot of people were saying, well, Trump will just cave and give Putin whatever he wants. And there was there was a real suggestion that if Putin says, look, no more military aid for Ukraine, Trump would say yes. And Putin said no more intelligence sharing with you. He would say yes. And if Putin said, you know, we're just going to freeze the borders where they are now, he would say yes. That didn't happen.

Putin did make it clear in the call, apparently, according to the readout, that he does want military aid to Ukraine to stop, and he does want intelligence sharing to stop. And the Americans didn't agree to that as per their readout. So we are still at the state where they have a long way to go in the negotiations. And for now, anyway, Trump is not giving into what exactly Putin wants. So they talked about ceasefire negotiations. We're hearing they also talked about improving bilateral relations between US and Russia, including through hockey games, I believe. Can you tell me about that, Paul? This is kind of strange. This was kind of the last paragraph of the Russian statement. This

didn't appear at all in the American readout of the phone call. But at the very end of the Russian one, it said that Trump accepted Putin's suggestion that NHL players should go and play KHL players as some kind of rapprochement or some kind of like breaking the ice in terms of repairing their relationships. It's very strange. I don't even know if Trump is a hockey fan at all. Putin certainly is. But it is a very interesting way of trying

to improve bilateral relations. Very interesting. So this call happened a little bit earlier on Tuesday. Do we know how this call is being received throughout, let's say, parts of Europe or elsewhere in the world? I think the Europeans are looking at this phone call and saying, well, you know, we're going to stick with Ukraine. We're going to keep supplying military aid.

I think they're breathing a bit of a sigh of relief that Trump did not cave into everything that Putin wanted, that there is a tiny step towards a broader ceasefire. So I think the Europeans will be fairly happy with this. They were, of course, cut out of all the discussions. There have been discussions between the US and Ukraine and the US and Russia, but Europe has not been involved in anything. So I think for now Europe's going to carry on preparing some kind of peacekeeping force, whether or not that's acceptable to Russia and that's acceptable to Ukraine. We'll have to see. But I think the Europeans are probably a little bit happier right now than they were maybe before the call. So the ceasefire deal that the U.S. and the Ukrainians talked about last week, this is not what Putin agreed to.

But let's actually talk about that deal, Paul, and what it entailed. Do we know what was in that initial deal? Well, that agreement called for a complete ceasefire of all fighting for 30 days, and then both sides will start to talk about the details. Putin's kind of flipped it around. He wants to talk about the details first and then have a ceasefire. He's prepared to go with this kind of partial ceasefire in the interim. I think the Ukrainians are still going to want something broader than what's on offer from this Trump-Putin phone call.

They're very clear that they would like to have all fighting stopped. They would like to get down to some really serious negotiations about the things that separate these two sides, and they are very far apart. Let's be clear, there's not a lot of ground between the two of these that is common at all. The Russians are pushing for basically recognition, global recognition of all the territory they've captured. That's not what Ukraine wants at all. And Russia's big thing is they want Ukraine basically neutered. They want to demilitarize. They want no more military funding for the Ukrainian army. And of course, Ukrainians say, well, that's ridiculous. If that happened to them, Russia would just invade,

you know, in a couple of years or so. So they're far apart on the bigger issues here, but I think Ukraine was prepared to sort of say, okay, let's stop the fighting and start talking, but Russia's not there yet. Yeah, so as you said, it does sound like there's still a lot of room between these two sides when it comes to these negotiations.

You mentioned, Paul, that something that Russia wanted was recognition of the territory that they've taken during the war. Can you tell me more about that? What would that mean? Well, they are very keen. And in fact, this came up just before the phone call. There were reports that the US might recognize Crimea and sort of officially recognize it and get the UN to try and recognize it as well.

Right now, most countries around the world do not recognize Russia having control over Crimea. It is still considered part of Ukraine. This is the region that actually Russia took in 2014 they annexed it. Yeah, so it was a while ago. 2014. So now what of course Putin wants is for the rest of the territory that they've taken to also be recognized. They claim four provinces in eastern Ukraine are now part of Russia even though the Russian military doesn't control all of them. They claim those are now Russian territory, just as Crimea is, and the world should recognize that. Of course, the Ukrainians kind of are coming around to the

point where they will accept the fact that those territories right now are temporarily occupied by the Russian military, but they do not want to see any kind of global recognition of Russia's control over those areas. And it is a little bit surprising that Trump did not agree to recognize Crimea. So that's something I guess that's still hanging out there, but that is one of Putin's key demands for sure. So with all of these demands from Putin, these stipulations that he would like to see with the ceasefire deal, are people hopeful? Is there a chance that this deal could actually go forward? Well, I think if you talk to people in Ukraine, they're not very hopeful at all.

I think from their perspective, they view this as more stalling tactics by Russia. Keep in mind that on the battlefield, the Russian military is making advances small, but they are, and Kursk, they have pushed the Ukrainians out. That has been a fairly major accomplishment by the Russians with the help of the North Koreans and at a humongous cost. But they have done that. Ukraine has pretty much been backed up to their own border in Kursk. On the eastern front, things are a little bit

tighter there, but Russia has been making small advances there. So that's why Putin really doesn't want to have a stop in all the fighting. He sees that the battlefield is turning in his favor. I think the Ukrainians are hoping of hoping that, yes, they want some kind of a ceasefire. They want to keep the Americans happy. They want to keep Trump happy because they don't want him to cut off the military aid again. And Europe will try and make up some of the difference,

but it can't make up all the difference. So right now, I think the Ukrainians are just kind of looking at this going, well, this is classic Putin. This is the way he operates, where he's kind of giving a little bit, but really holding back a lot. And in the grand scheme of things, nothing's really happening. Can you just give us a little bit of a sense of the state of the war then at the moment?

Paul, where do both sides stand if we're talking about it right now? I think if you're looking at Eastern Ukraine and kind of the long, long frontline there, not much has changed in the past year. Russia has not made significant gains and I don't think Ukraine has made any gains at all on that front. So Russia picks up a little bit here and there, villages here and there. I think the big victory for Putin, if you want to call it that, is he reclaimed the cursed territory. This was a part of Russia that the Ukrainian military swept into last August by surprise, went 30 kilometers in, captured something like a thousand

square kilometers of territory. They have systematically been losing that. And there was questions at the time whether Ukraine could hang on to this. But I think President Zelensky saw it as kind of a bargaining chip. If they had a little bit of Russia, then maybe they could use that as leverage to get back some of their territory. Well, the Russians, with the help of the North Koreans, have now managed to push the Ukrainians, as of this weekend, right back to their own border. And I think right now, Ukraine is down to basically a buffer zone. And there are questions about whether the Russian military will keep going into the Sumi region of Northeastern Ukraine.

That seems unlikely right now, but nonetheless, it's a bit of a setback for Ukraine. They've lost what leverage they would have had, and it costs an awful lot of lives, particularly on the Russian side. There's reports that they're losing something like a thousand soldiers a day trying to take Kursk back. They have done that now and there were some suggesting that, okay, that ought to be enough for Putin to agree to a ceasefire that he got back the really big thing that he wanted, but it doesn't look that way. It looks like they are very determined to keep going. We'll be back in a moment. So Paul, you just left Ukraine earlier today. You were in the capital, Kyiv. And I understand the last time that you were there, it was much earlier in the war, back in 2022, in fact. Can you tell me

how have things changed since then in the city? Yeah, I was surprised. I mean, I was last there in the fall of 2022, just when Russia really launched its attack on Ukrainian power supplies and infrastructure. And of course, heading into the winter, that was going to be a huge problem. And it did it cut. There were rolling blackouts. There were problems with heating. I remember seeing people lining up for water taps in parks because there was no running water in their apartment building. It just looked like,

and it was really hurting the morale of the city. You could just see that they were gonna head into a winter with these bombing raids on their infrastructure. And it was just demoralizing for people. Going back there now, I was asking people, how was this winter? And they said there were hardly any blackouts. There was hardly any heating problem

and the water was fine and the streets were alive and the bars and restaurants were all open and the city looked very much alive. There were not nearly as many air raid alarms as there were when I was there before. We went to a power substation actually that had been attacked by the Russians 19 times in the past couple of years and they keep it going. They managed to keep repairing it. They keep replacing the transformers. They keep it going. Maybe only 50 percent, but they keep it going. The country and the city has has adapted in a way that's really struck me. And there's a resilience there that I think is pretty admirable. And from the people you talk to them, Paul, how do they feel about being at war now?

And I guess compared to when you were talking to them in 2022. Well, there you do find a big difference. Of course in 2022 certainly earlier on in 2022 everybody was going to join the military. Everything was gung-ho. The volunteers were lining up. Now it's a very different story. I think fatigue has definitely set in. People are fed up with the war. Yes there are still rallies. There's one every Sunday for the Azoff troops that were captured by the Russians, the folks that hung on to the steel plant in Mariupol for so long. There are still demonstrations here and there, but they're not as big as they were. I think people generally are really, really tired of the war. They would like to see it end. And that's why I think you're seeing

people get their heads around to the fact that, yes, Russia has captured territory that is going to have to be labeled temporarily occupied. They are going to have to write it off for a few years or maybe however long it takes to get it back. Whereas I think in 2022, that was just a non-starter. They were definitely going to take back all the territory. Now I think people have got their heads around. So that's not going to happen in the short term and that they've just better come to some kind of a peace agreement just to stop the fighting and stop the killing. So you're saying there seems to be a bit of a sentiment now that people are okay, at least temporarily, to label this territory that the Russians have taken as occupied territory,

not necessarily Russian territory, but there's a bit of leeway there from what you're hearing? Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody really in their deepest of hearts would say that Ukraine is going to take back Eastern Ukraine, take back all the territory Russia has captured. They see the battle, they see the way it's going there. It's their sons and daughters that are on the front lines and they can see that it's three years later, not much has changed. I don't think anybody's under any illusions that the Ukrainian military is going to push

Russia out of all the borders right back to the way they were before the war. I think there's some acknowledgement that there has to be some acceptance, not recognition, but acceptance that these territories are occupied by Russia, whether it stays that way or not, who knows? I mean, someone said to me the other day, look at the former USSR, Latvia, Estonia, those places. They were under effectively occupation for decades. And it took that long before they became independent again. Same with Ukraine. So it's a long game. And I think people now are realizing that, OK,

let's stop the fighting. Let's accept the fact. And let's push through on the diplomatic front or another way to strengthen the country and to get his borders back. I want to ask you about another issue that we've been hearing being raised here. This is about

Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russian troops. We've talked about this a little bit earlier throughout the conflict, but can you just remind us what has happened there, Paul? Well, this is another thing that Zelensky, of course, is very keen to talk about. I mean, these are kids when the Russians occupied cities like Mariupol and that some children were there and they got separated from the families and now they're God knows where in Russia, right? They've been either adopted or taken or sent to other families. And I think there's been a long concerted effort since the war started to get these children back. And some do come back and bits and pieces. But I think there's a feeling that maybe this is going to be a bargaining chip on Putin's part. It did not come up in the call with Trump,

but I know it came up in the discussion in Jeddah because Zelensky's made it pretty central to their demands. But it's a very, very difficult issue to tackle because it's hard to find these kids. It's hard to then negotiate their return and get them returned. And it's just a real, real nightmare. And it's certainly a nightmare for the families involved.

So we started off talking about this call between Trump and Putin. In our last few minutes, Paul, I also want to ask you about what's going on between Trump and Zelensky here between the U.S. and Ukraine. We saw tensions last month, quite heated at the White House when Zelensky visited Trump there. And one of the reasons he was there in the first place was to sign a minerals deal with the U.S. It still has not been signed, but what do we know about what this deal would entail? We don't know a lot of the details, but I think from Ukraine's perspective, they're probably very keen to have it signed simply because I think the Americans have overthought

just how mineral rich Ukraine is. Yes, it has a lot of minerals. It has some unique rock formations that make it very attractive in terms of graphite and lithium and these things that we need to power electric vehicles and our phones and everything else. It doesn't really have a lot of these rare elements that the Trump keeps talking about. These are the 17 elements that are vital

for cell phones and a lot of technology. And they don't really exist in great numbers in Ukraine. There aren't huge deposits of that. There are huge deposits of graphite and other things, but the mining infrastructure there is Soviet era. I mean, I was at a mine last week and it operates one month a year and the equipment dates back to the 1960s and even earlier. So it's going to take an awful lot of money to get that mine competitive and that's just one mine. So I think if Ukraine could get American investment in there, they'd be thrilled.

So this deal would essentially see the US invest in the Ukrainian mineral industry. You said something really interesting about how Trump thinks there's more critical minerals than there actually are in Ukraine. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, I mean, you've seen figures in the US, you know, Lindsey Graham and these people talking about $2 trillion worth of mineral wealth in Ukraine. Well, if you talk to the mining experts and the folks in Ukraine itself will tell you that the best guess they have is maybe $700 billion. And Ukraine's total exports of minerals last year was like $100 million.

So yeah, there's deposits, but it's very expensive to get the minerals out of the ground. There's probably cheaper and better places to go in Canada or elsewhere, even Greenland for that matter, given that Trump has an interest in Greenland as well. But there are cheaper places to operate a mine than Ukraine. And some of the big deposits are close to the front line or even in Russian-held territory. So I'm not sure the mineral wealth is as much as Trump thinks it is, but the Ukrainians

aren't asking a lot of questions right now. They're quite happy to sign the dotted line and have the Americans come and help them develop it. So where is that discrepancy between maybe the amount of minerals they actually have and the amount of minerals that the US seems to think they might have? Well, one of the problems, and this is kind of funny because my mining guy was telling me that part of the problem is that some of the estimates that Trump and the others are using are based from Soviet era data. And what happened in the Soviet times was that geologists had an incentive to inflate their numbers so they would look good to their superiors and bosses in Moscow.

So there's a lot of dubious estimates floating around. Now there have been some proper estimates done that show, yes, there are decent deposits of graphite and lithium and titanium and things like that. But it's one thing to say there's a deposit. It's another thing to say it will be economically viable to get it out of the ground. Yeah. I also want to ask you about Elon Musk, which may seem like kind of a, you know, out of left field here, but he did step in to help Ukraine at the beginning of the war. He donated thousands of Starlink satellite internet terminals, and that actually helped Ukraine's military stay connected at that point in time.

He was viewed very favorably at the time, but I understand, Paul, that that's kind of changed, and you got a sense of that while you were there in Ukraine. How is he viewed now? Oh, yeah, he's not viewed very well at all right now. I mean, he's been very critical of Zelensky. He's been critical of the Ukrainian military. He's mocked Zelensky. And then there were suggestions that maybe he's

going to pull the Starlinx out of Ukraine or not let them work anymore. So people have really soured on him. And we talked to some people that own Teslas in Ukraine. And there are a lot of Teslas in Ukraine. There are a lot of electric vehicles in Ukraine because of the high cost of fuel and the fact that there's no sales tax and no excise tax on importing

a Tesla or any kind of electric vehicle. So electric vehicles are very popular. And Teslas are the biggest model. So we asked a bunch of Tesla owners. And they're not very happy to be owning his car anymore. Some of them are trying to sell them and some people are saying that they might not buy another one. So yeah there's real anger about Musk and it gets kind of combined up into real anger with Trump as well. You know people are very mystified at why Trump is kind of turned on Ukraine. They

don't trust him anymore and of course Musk being his right hand man, they're very mad at him too. So with reduced US support for Ukraine, which countries are emerging now to fill that gap? It's interesting now when you talk to people in Ukraine, they very much focused on Europe. They expect they want, they hope that Europe will step up and at least come part way to filling the gap of the Americans. So they're very much focused on Europe. Ukraine is very keen to join the European Union, which to my mind would be a much bigger deal for the country than joining NATO.

Membership of the European Union would be a godsend for Ukraine. And I think they're very keen to do that, whether it happens or not, we'll see. So I think that the shift now has been much more towards Europe, Canada as well. I mean, Canada now is held in very high esteem, even in Ukraine, even though we can't match anywhere near what the US or the EU could possibly do. But I think right now there's a real pivot in Ukraine away from the US and towards Europe. So just very lastly here, Paul, what can we expect next when it comes to

these ceasefire talks? I think what we can expect is more of the same. You know, I just don't think a lot is going to change in the short term. I think Putin is going to drag this out because he's seeing his military gain the upper hand on the battlefield and he has no incentive to stop the fighting. Paul, really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for being here. OK. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. Our intern is Amber Ranssen. Our producers are

Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Matt Fraynor is our managing editor. You can subscribe to the Globe and Mail at globeandmail.com slash subscribe. Thanks so much for listening.