What did 13 March 2025 reveal about the ceasefire push?
A retrospective on a day when Moscow set conditions for a U.S. ceasefire proposal, a European court ruled on Odesa 2014, and an Odesa shooting made news.
What did the diplomacy of 13 March 2025 actually amount to? On that date, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine would depend on Russia's conditions being met, and that there would be further discussions. It was a response that neither accepted nor rejected the plan, and it left the next step open.
The proposal Moscow was answering
The proposal had been announced two days earlier. On 11 March 2025, the United States and Ukraine said they intended to seek a 30-day ceasefire with Russia after talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. side was represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and the Ukrainian side by presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak. The same day, the U.S. government lifted its suspension on sharing intelligence and military aid to Ukraine.
Putin's remarks on 13 March therefore placed the burden of the next round on conditions Russia itself would define, with no ceasefire date attached.
Europe plans in parallel
Also on 11 March 2025, the military chiefs of all European NATO countries met in Paris, alongside Ukrainian representatives, to discuss a potential European peacekeeping force in Ukraine. The U.S. was not involved in that meeting. The discussion belonged to the wider coalition of the willing, which was led by the United Kingdom and France and announced by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on 2 March 2025. Later, the coalition grew to 34 countries, pledged to be ready to contribute to a peacekeeping force that would be deployed only once Ukraine and Russia signed a comprehensive ceasefire agreement or peace deal.
The battlefield in the background
The diplomacy unfolded alongside heavy fighting. On 11 March, Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on Moscow, the largest inside Russia since the start of the war; at least three people were killed and 18 injured, fires were reported across the city and flights from Sheremetyevo International Airport were suspended. Russia claimed its air defences had shot down at least 337 Ukrainian drones overnight across 10 oblasts. The same day, a Russian missile strike on a cargo ship carrying grain to Algeria at the Port of Odesa killed four crew members and severely damaged the vessel.
In Kursk Oblast, Russia announced on 11 March that its forces had retaken multiple villages up to the outskirts of Sudzha as Ukrainian forces withdrew to avoid encirclement. On 12 March, Russian troops, backed by close air support, entered Sudzha, ending seven months of Ukrainian occupation of the town.
Odesa and a court ruling
On 13 March 2025, two developments concerned Odesa. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Ukrainian government had failed to prevent, and to investigate properly, the clashes in Odesa in 2014, and ordered it to pay compensation. The same day, Demyan Hanul, a former leader of the Odesa branch of Right Sector, was shot dead in Odesa.
Other announcements
Also on 13 March, Putin announced that Russian citizens permanently residing in Belarus would be able to vote and run in local elections there, and that Belarusian citizens permanently residing in Russia would have the same rights in Russia, under the Union State arrangement.
A day of conditions
Taken together, 13 March 2025 showed a ceasefire proposal on the table, a Russian leader tying it to his own conditions, and European governments preparing their own plans for a post-agreement force. Kyiv, meanwhile, faced a court judgment on a domestic matter from 2014 even as the war's diplomacy dominated attention.
