Vladimir Putin will agree a ceasefire this year in Ukraine, says the country’s military intelligence chief.
Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, says there are “most of the components” for such a truce to be agreed.
US and Russian delegations led by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Saudi Arabia this week about a peace deal and rebuilding US-Russia ties.
Controversially, they excluded Ukraine, and European powers, from the talks.
This move was condemned by Ukraine, Britain and other European countries.
Donald Trump then unleashed a series of extraordinary attacks on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, branding him a “dictator” and claiming his country had started Vladimir Putin’s war.
But Mr Budanov believes a ceasefire in the war with Russia will be struck this year.
“I think it is going to happen. There are most of the components for it to happen,” he said in a YouTube interview with journalist Eynulla Fatullayev.
He gave no details. Ukrainian officials largely dismiss the idea of a ceasefire, warning it will only give Russia time to rearm and prepare for further aggression.
“How long it will be, how effective it will be - is another question,” Budanov added.
Putin’s war has already led to hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers being killed or wounded, similarly high casualties among Ukrainian forces, as well as thousands of civilians dying, and both economies being hard hit.
Discussions about a possible ceasefire intensified after Trump, who promised a quick end to the war, returned to the White House for his second presidential term.
He caught European capitals by surprise after pressing ahead with peace talks following a phone call with Putin.
Sir Keir Starmer, who has rejected Trump’s attacks on Mr Zelensky, has pledged British troops would take part in such an operation.
But the Kremlin said on Thursday that any plan to send European troops to Ukraine as part of a potential peacekeeping mission would be unacceptable for Russia and that it was monitoring such proposals with concern.
Sir Keir is planning to discuss the peace-keeping plan with Trump in a White House meeting next week, amid fears that the US president is planning a deal with Putin to carve up Ukraine.
Former Defence Secretary Sir Ben Wallace has warned of a “stench” of Nazi appeasement in the way the Trump team is going about seeking a peace deal, amid fears it includes carving up Ukraine as part of moves to restore US-Russia ties.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the reported peace-keeping proposal was unacceptable because it would involve forces from a NATO member state and therefore have ramifications for Russia’s own security.
“This causes concern for us, because we’re talking about sending military contingents - about the possible, eventual sending of military contingents from NATO countries to Ukraine,” he said.
“This takes on a completely different meaning from the point of view of our security”, he said. “We’re monitoring this very closely.”
Amid the talks with the United States in Riyadh on Tuesday, Russia demanded NATO scrap its 2008 promise to one day give Ukraine membership of the US-led alliance.
But Sir Keir has stressed that Ukraine is on an “irreversible path” to NATO membership.
