Trump said “it’s up to Russia now” as his administration presses Moscow to agree to the ceasefire. “And hopefully we can get a cease-fire from Russia,” Trump said Wednesday in an extended exchange with reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Micheál Martin, the prime minster of Ireland. “And if we do, I think that would be 80 percent of the way to getting this horrible bloodbath” ended. The president again made veiled threats of hitting Russia with new sanctions. “We can, but I hope it’s not going to be necessary,” Trump said. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the American delegation to Saudi Arabia, where Ukraine consented to the US cease-fire proposal, said Washington will pursue “multiple points of contacts” with Russia to see if President Vladimir Putin is ready to negotiate an end to the war. He declined to give details or say what steps might be taken if Putin refuses to engage. The United States hopes Russia stops attacks on Ukraine within the next few days as a first step, Rubio said at a refueling stop Wednesday in Shannon, Ireland, on his way to talks in Canada with other Group of Seven leading industrialized nations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that national security adviser Mike Waltz spoke Wednesday with his Russian counterpart. She also confirmed that Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will head to Moscow for talks with Russian officials. She did not say with whom Witkoff planned to meet. A person familiar with the matter said Witkoff is expected to meet with Putin later his week. The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Zelensky said the 30-day cease-fire would allow the sides “to fully prepare a step-by-step plan for ending the war, including security guarantees for Ukraine.” Technical questions over how to effectively monitor a truce along the roughly 600-mile front line, where small but deadly drones are common, are “very important,” Zelensky told reporters Wednesday in Kyiv. Arms deliveries to Ukraine have already resumed through a Polish logistics center, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland announced Wednesday. The deliveries go through a NATO and US hub in the eastern Polish city of Rzeszow that’s has been used to ferry Western weapons into neighboring Ukraine about 45 miles away. The military help is vital for Ukraine’s shorthanded and weary army, which is having a tough time keeping Russia’s bigger military force at bay. For Russia, the American aid spells potentially more difficulty in achieving war aims, and it could make Washington’s peace efforts a tougher sell in Moscow. The US government has also restored Ukraine’s access to unclassified commercial satellite pictures provided by Maxar Technologies through a program Washington runs, Maxar spokesperson Tomi Maxted said. The images help Ukraine plan attacks, assess their success, and monitor Russian movements. In other developments, officials acknowledged Wednesday that Kyiv no longer has any of the longer-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, missiles. According to a US official and a Ukrainian lawmaker on the country’s defense committee, Ukraine has run out of the ATACMs. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide military weapons details. The US official said the United States provided fewer than 40 of those missiles overall and that Ukraine ran out of them in late January. Senior US defense leaders, including the previous Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin, had made it clear that only a limited number of the ATACMs would be delivered and that the US and NATO allies considered other weapons to be more valuable in the fight.
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