Here is the situation on Wednesday, March 12 :
Ceasefire talks
Senior officials from the United States and Ukraine met in Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah for nine hours of talks, after which Kyiv said it had agreed to accept an immediate 30-day truce and take steps towards restoring long-lasting peace with Moscow, a US-Ukraine joint statement announced.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the talks the “ball is now in Russia’s court”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the truce as a “positive” deal and said the US now must convince Russia to accept the proposal.
Following the high-level meeting, Washington announced that it would immediately lift all military aid suspensions imposed on Ukraine and resume intelligence sharing with Kyiv. Pavlo Palisa, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, confirmed the resumption of US military assistance.
Responding to the outcome of the US-Ukraine talks in Jeddah, Trump said he hopes Russia agrees to the ceasefire deal, adding that US officials will meet their Russian counterparts later this week.
Despite their public clash at the Oval Office last month, Trump said he would also invite Zelenskyy back to the White House.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia expects the US to brief Moscow on its talks with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia on the proposed ceasefire.
The Reuters news agency reported that Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is scheduled to visit Moscow this week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fighting
Russia said its forces have reclaimed 12 settlements and more than 100sq km (38.6sq miles) of territory in the Kursk region from Ukrainian troops who entered Russia in August 2024 in a surprise military incursion.
The death toll in Russia from Ukraine’s barrage of 337 drones on Tuesday has risen to three, while a total of 18 people were injured.
The death toll from a Ukrainian strike on a shopping centre in Kursk also rose from three to five, the region’s governor, Alexander Khinshtein, said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said its troops captured the village of Dachne in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Donetsk regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said six people were killed – including two children – and seven others were wounded in Russian attacks.
Ukraine’s Sea Ports Authority said in a post on Facebook, which it later deleted, that a Russian missile attack on a grain vessel in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa killed four people and left the ship damaged.
Ukraine’s air defence forces were mobilised to repel an overnight Russian air attack on Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Politics and diplomacy
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the visiting secretary-general of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Feridun Sinirlioglu, will be brought to a site in Moscow where Ukrainian drones were shot down during a large-scale raid on Tuesday, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Zakharova also said Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow indicated Kyiv was losing on the battlefield, leading it to directly attack civilian areas.
Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov visited troops in Kursk and awarded medals to soldiers for successfully ousting Ukrainian forces from the territory, the Defence Ministry said.
