Kyiv's law on deploying troops abroad, 17 March 2025
A look back at the day Ukraine's president signed a law allowing the armed forces to operate beyond the country's borders during martial law, amid ceasefire diplomacy.
What did Ukraine's leadership decide on 17 March 2025, while ceasefire diplomacy was in full swing? President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law allowing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to operate abroad during martial law.
The signing came in the middle of an intense stretch of diplomacy over the war. On 11 March 2025, the United States and Ukraine announced their intention to seek a 30-day ceasefire with Russia after talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Those talks involved the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, and the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andriy Yermak.
Moscow's response
On 13 March 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine would depend on Russia's conditions being met, and that there would be further discussions. The following day, 14 March 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly asked Putin to spare the lives of what he described as thousands of Ukrainian soldiers said to be surrounded in Kursk Oblast.
A court ruling at home
Ukraine also faced a legal reckoning over its past in those days. On 13 March 2025, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Ukrainian government had failed to prevent, and to investigate properly, the 2014 clashes in Odesa, and ordered it to pay compensation.
Taken together, the reports from the days around 17 March 2025 show a country handling several fronts at once: negotiations over a possible ceasefire, a battlefield situation that drew a public appeal from Washington, a ruling from Strasbourg, and a change to the legal framework for its armed forces under martial law.
