When the Kremlin released its summary of President Vladimir V. Putin’s call Tuesday with President Trump, one thing was unmistakable: The Russian leader hadn’t retreated from his maximalist aims in Ukraine and so far has conceded little.

Much of what Mr. Putin agreed to during the call — including a limited 30-day halt on energy infrastructure strikes by both sides, a prisoner exchange and talks about security in the Black Sea — was spun as a concession to Mr. Trump in the respective summaries of the conversation released by Moscow and Washington.

But all were goals that the Kremlin has pursued and seen as advantageous in the past. Russia and Ukraine previously reached a tacit mutual agreement to refrain from energy infrastructure strikes, which have caused pain for both Moscow and Kyiv. Russia has long conducted prisoner exchanges with Ukraine, seeing the repatriation of its soldiers as a key Kremlin interest. And uninterrupted trading in the Black Sea is critical to Russia’s economy.

The lack of clear concessions on the Russian side stoked fears among Ukraine’s backers that Mr. Putin was playing for time, hewing to his staunch demands while hoping, in the meantime, that Washington’s tattered relationship with Kyiv fully breaks or that Ukrainian forces face a battlefield collapse.

Mr. Putin’s demands on Ukraine appeared unchanged. During the call, according to the Kremlin, Mr. Putin reiterated requirements for a comprehensive 30-day cease-fire that he knows are nonstarters for Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, he claimed that the Ukrainians had sabotaged and violated agreements in the past, and accused Ukraine of committing “barbaric terrorist crimes” in the Kursk region of Russia.

By Wednesday, the Kremlin was already accusing Kyiv of violating the limited cease-fire on energy infrastructure, even though President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had yet to be briefed by Washington on the call or formally agree to the deal.

During Tuesday’s call, the Kremlin said, Mr. Putin also identified his “key condition” for settling the conflict more broadly: a complete cessation of outside military and intelligence support for Kyiv. Such an outcome, analysts say, would make Ukraine, a country far smaller than Russia, permanently hostage to Moscow’s overwhelming military superiority and forever stranded within the Kremlin’s orbit, without any counterbalancing backers.

The Kremlin may be hoping that during the course of negotiations, an already impatient Washington walks away from Ukraine for good, freeing Mr. Putin to continue his war while also separately re-establishing relations with the United States. Russia may also be counting on the possibility that Kyiv, facing an increasingly dire picture on the battlefield and the loss of its biggest backer, ultimately agrees to an erosion of its sovereignty that benefits the Kremlin.

“The best outcome for Putin is one where he accomplishes his aims in Ukraine and can normalize relations with the U.S.,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former U.S. intelligence official who is now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington. “So Putin wants to string Trump along to give him just enough to see if he can accomplish that.”

Ms. Kendall-Taylor added that Mr. Putin will feel he has little to lose, believing that Mr. Trump, who has made no secret of his dim view of Ukraine and of Washington’s European allies, “won’t be willing to really ramp up pressure on Russia or recommit to Europe.”

“There is a lot of incentive for the Russians to participate, to play along and look for every opportunity to use this construct to their maximum advantage,” Ms. Kendall-Taylor said.

Mr. Putin also has significant advantages on the battlefield. His forces are winning back territory. Ukraine’s biggest and most important supporter, the United States, is openly itching to abandon Kyiv, as well as Europe more broadly. Europe, suddenly realizing its peril without U.S. backing, has been caught flat-footed and is now scrambling to figure out how to secure its own defense — let alone that of Ukraine.

“In Russian diplomatic functioning, negotiations often are just tools of winning time and depriving the adversary of its balance,” said Andras Racz, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Racz said that Washington’s stated desire to reach a quick resolution to the conflict confers a certain advantage to Moscow, which is “not in a hurry.”

He held out the possibility that the Trump administration, faced with Mr. Putin’s refusal to cede ground on Ukraine, could begin applying pressure on Russia. Mr. Trump has made such threats in the past.

The White House could also offer Mr. Putin more.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Washington’s power in Europe grew significantly, with many of the countries that once answered to Moscow joining NATO and ultimately the West. Mr. Putin has never accepted that outcome, making him eager to hold broader discussions on European security with the Trump administration. His apparent hope is that Washington will not only agree to an arrangement that places Ukraine in Russia’s orbit but also will concede a broader curtailment of U.S. influence on the continent. Washington’s ability to grant those broader wishes gives the White House some measure of leverage, even if previous administrations ruled them out as impossible.

“Trump has few options to counter either a Russian rejection or protracted feigned compliance,” wrote Alexander Baunov, a Russian author and political analyst. “The most effective method will be the carrot rather than the stick: the temptation of a major deal.”

Russia, while giving little on Ukraine, has begun trying to lure Washington with the fruits of a rapprochement. Russian officials have been touting their vast reserves of rare earth metals, saying they would be happy to exploit them with American companies, and holding out possible deals for American investors in the Russian energy sector.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump spent part of the discussion on Tuesday talking about what the Kremlin called “a wide range of areas in which our countries could establish interaction,” including ideas about cooperation in the energy sector. The Russian leader, according to the Kremlin, secured Mr. Trump’s agreement to hold hockey tournaments with Russian and American professional players facing off against one another.

Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that the Kremlin would be hoping to get the United States to restore ties without predicating renewed relations on an end to the fighting in Ukraine. That’s why, he added, the Kremlin is front-loading the discussion with all the potential benefits for the United States from a renewed relationship with Russia.

“The impression is that they have a very, very, very good reading of Trump,” Mr. Gabuev said of the Kremlin. “They know where the weak spots are, they know how to massage his ego. To me, the Russian team is winning at this point.”

From Brussels to Berlin, leaders across Europe are getting ready to spend hundreds of billions to rebuild their armies. The spending, they say, is necessary to prepare Europe for the dangers of a world where the United States no longer guarantees its security.

But many of them are also hoping that the surge of money will have another important effect: revitalizing the continent’s slumping industrial sector and opening a new front for economic growth.

That connection between defense investment and competitiveness is one of the topics European leaders are likely to discuss when they meet in Brussels on Thursday, after the European Commission publishes a long-awaited paper on the future of European defense on Wednesday.

“Economic strength and Europe’s plan to rearm are two sides of the same coin,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a recent speech, calling the potential investments a “powerful tailwind for important industries.”

But whether that will be the case is far from certain, and the challenges to Europe actually making it happen are enormous.

While there is a growing consensus that new military spending is likely to offer some boost to European economies in the near term, just how much will depend on how well that money is spent and where.

Most European economies have relatively modest defense industries, though France and Germany in particular are seeking to grow theirs. For decades, Europe has depended significantly on imports of American arms and equipment, particularly when it comes to the most sophisticated weapons. That makes the continent not particularly well suited to absorb new military spending immediately.

But European leaders are keen to change that, in order to keep tighter control over their own security, and to best reap the economic impact from that investment.

President Emmanuel Macron of France is pushing allies, including Germany, to buy French missile-defense systems instead of American ones. Portugal’s defense minister said last week that the country might replace aging fighter jets with European ones, not American-made F-35s, citing concerns over the Trump administration’s embrace of Russia.

The European Union’s recently unveiled 150 billion euro loan program — meant to finance shared military development — will prioritize European-made products, officials announced on Wednesday. Members states must ensure that 65 percent of the costs of what they buy comes either from within the E.U. or from partners including Ukraine and Norway.

But building out Europe’s modest military industries to meet those ambitions will take time.

Friedrich Merz, Germany’s likely incoming chancellor, laid out the challenges to lawmakers on Tuesday, before Germany’s lower house of parliament voted to loosen constitutional limits on debt to allow more billions more in spending to revamp the country’s military. The measures must now pass the upper chamber and survive legal challenges before becoming law.

“Now we need to rebuild defense capabilities, in part from scratch, with a technology-driven defense and procurement strategy, with automated systems, with independent European satellite surveillance, with armed drones and with many modern defense systems and, above all, with reliable and predictable orders that should go to European manufacturers whenever possible,” Mr. Merz said.

European nations have increased spending on defense by nearly a third since 2021. But even combined, their annual military budgets remain less than half of the United States’. Defense industries employed just under 600,000 Europeans last year. By comparison, automobile manufacturers alone employed more than 3 million.

In some cases, like tanks and missile batteries, Europe will need to scale up existing industries or repurpose other industrial production lines. In others — including drone technology and some of the most cutting-edge weapons and military support equipment — Europe will need to quickly build its own rivals to compete with American players. Defense officials caution it could take years to pull that off, if not a decade.

And there is a risk that when European nations buy close to home, they will want to buy domestically rather than from Germany or France — duplicating efforts across the bloc. Europe already has some redundancy problems in defense. Ukraine, for example, has been sent at least 17 different kinds of howitzers, not all of which use the same type of shell.

If Europe’s new spending ends up being duplicative, both the economic and strategic benefits could be muted.

That is why some economists caution that the economic lift, while likely, might not be enough to buffer European governments against the populist backlash they have faced in recent years.

But if the E.U. can add new industries with coordinated investment and purchasing, then the growth effects could be significant.

They might even be enough to help aging European countries temper a downward spiral of shrinking workforces and plunging investment, spurring new technologies that would spill over into civilian sectors and providing a more lasting benefit.

Much depends on how the new spending plans play out.

The philosophy, at the moment, appears to start with spending big — and staying close to home. In Brussels, European Union officials have made clear that they want to build up defense production abilities across their 27-member block. To catalyze investment, they have pitched a 150 billion euro loan program.

They have also proposed loosening European fiscal rules so that individual nations will be able to spend more, which they estimate could unleash as much at 650 billion euros, more than $710 billion, in additional spending. Whether that much spending actually happens will hinge on whether national governments are willing to take on more debt for military spending.

Even with the challenges of buying local, many economists think that European growth as a whole will see some benefit from the defense buildup. Goldman Sachs estimated a modest bump in the eurozone in each of the next three years, with the largest benefit in 2027.

The Goldman economists upgraded their growth estimates in part because of the German plan to ease debt limits. But others tempered expectations.

The German military spending plan “is really about security,” said Clemens Fuest, an economist who is the president of the ifo Institute in Munich, and who helped advise Mr. Merz.

“It’s good for the country because we want to avoid war in Europe,” Mr. Fuest said in an interview. But, he added, “It’s not good in terms of, ‘It’s going to create more growth,’ or anything.”

Still, at a time when German automakers and their suppliers have shed some 46,000 jobs since 2019, some Germans wonder if it may be time to turn idled automotive factories into cutting-edge plants for tanks or drones.

The German arms maker Rheinmetall has already taken a lead role in scaling up the country’s weapons-production capacities. It has provided new jobs to dozens of workers from one of Germany’s struggling auto suppliers, Continental AG. It has also been in talks with Volkswagen about the possibility of taking over an underperforming factory near Osnabrück.

“If German taxpayer money is being spent, then we need to create German jobs,” Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall’s chief executive, told reporters last week, adding that he expected Rheinmetall alone to add 10,000 jobs in Germany over the next two years.

That growth may be felt beyond Germany, too. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Rheinmetall has built new factories in Spain, Lithuania and Romania, growing into the one of the largest munitions producers in the West.

Every new factory creates 500 to 1,000 new jobs directly, and several thousand more in the surrounding area, Mr. Papperger said.

And even though France has limited room to borrow to scale up its own spending, it, too, could benefit from higher military outlays in the rest of the region, Goldman Sachs economists say. It hosts the largest military in the E.U. and is a major arms exporter.

Vicky Redwood, an economic adviser at Capital Economics, wrote in a March 13 analysis that in general, increasing military spending by 1 percent of G.D.P. would lift growth by around 0.5 percent. Outside of Germany, she wrote, a “reasonable” estimate is that European nations will raise their military spending by between 0.5 and 1.5 percent as a share of output.

But several factors could affect how much military expenditure boosts growth, she wrote. Those include how much of the spending goes toward research and development and how efficiently the spending is done. Nothing is certain.

Apart from Reinmetall, “the others are rather smaller players,” said Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research. “I have doubts that this will be the future of Germany’s comparative advantage, changing from building cars to building tanks.”

Israelis were gathering on Wednesday outside the Parliament building in Jerusalem to protest moves by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they say undermine the country’s democracy and to call for a renewed cease-fire deal for Gaza to bring the remaining hostages there home.

The convergence of popular anger over both domestic and national security issues comes after Israel carried out deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, ending a temporary truce with Hamas that began in January.

The broad sense of national solidarity that had surrounded the war in Gaza, set off on Oct. 7, 2023, by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, now appears to be fraying.

There are growing accusations in Israel that Mr. Netanyahu’s priorities are his political survival and of bolstering his right-wing government ahead of a crucial budget vote later this month.

Protesters closed down the main highway into Jerusalem during the morning hours as they marched into the city in scenes reminiscent of the social and political upheaval that roiled the country in the months before the war over government plans to curb the powers of the judiciary.

At the time, Israeli security chiefs and experts said the internal strife had contributed to Israel’s vulnerability and encouraged its enemies.

Protests were initially called for Wednesday after Mr. Netanyahu announced that he was moving to dismiss the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, citing a lack of personal trust between them.

That has raised public concerns about the government’s renewed push to reduce the power of state watchdogs and make appointments that critics say are based on loyalty.

The centrist leader of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, Yair Lapid, called on people to join the protests in a social media post on Wednesday morning.

“This government does not stop at red,” he wrote. “The only solution is unity, not silent, submissive, or fake unity, but the unity of an entire nation coming together and saying: Enough!” He added, “This is our moment, our future, our country. Take to the streets!”

Mr. Netanyahu said that the surprise attack on Gaza on Tuesday was the opening salvo in a campaign to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages after weeks of fruitless negotiations via mediators.

From now on, he said, Israel would increase its military action against Hamas and negotiations would take place “only under fire.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.

The leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda have called for a cease-fire in eastern Congo in a bid to end the latest deadly chapter in a three-decade conflict.

The surprise announcement followed an unannounced meeting in Qatar on Tuesday, and analysts said it could either signal a de-escalation in a conflict that has threatened to become a regional war, or be the latest failed attempt to bring peace to this part of Central Africa.

Presidents Félix Tshisekedi of Congo and Paul Kagame of Rwanda committed to an “immediate and unconditional cease-fire,” according to a joint statement issued with Qatar, though they did not say how the cease-fire would be carried out or monitored.

The meeting was the leaders’ most significant step since a Rwanda-backed armed group, called M23, captured eastern Congo’s two largest cities and large swathes of the territory in an offensive that began in January.

“This is the first time a concrete statement is coming from both leaders,” said Oluwole Ojewale, a scholar with the Institute for Security Studies who focuses on Central Africa.

The fighting has displaced more than 700,000 people since January, according to the United Nations refugee agency, and killed thousands of others.

The leaders’ meeting came a day after the European Union announced sanctions on the Rwandan government and military officials over the backing of M23. Rwanda retaliated by severing diplomatic ties with Belgium, a country that was once the colonial ruler in both Congo and Rwanda, and which has been a leading voice for sanctions on Rwanda over its involvement in the conflict.

Mr. Tshisekedi and Mr. Kagame said in the statement that they wanted to “establish solid foundations for lasting peace” in eastern Congo, where three decades of fighting over ethnic tensions and access to land have killed millions of people.

Previous attempts at truces have failed, either because cease-fires have been violated or because the warring parties backed out of talks at the last minute — including a meeting that had been scheduled for Tuesday between Congo’s government and M23’s leadership.

M23 said on Monday that it would not participate in that gathering, which was set to be held in Angola, whose president is seen as more amenable to Congo’s cause. Instead, Rwanda’s and Congo’s presidents met in Qatar, which is a close ally of Rwanda.

“Congo might have realized that it had to make a concession,” said Jason Stearns, the co-founder of the New York University-based Congo Research Group.

M23, a group created in 2012, is armed and commanded by Rwanda’s army, according to the United Nations, the United States and the European Union. Rwanda denies backing the group and says that the violence in neighboring Congo is threatening its security.

The group, which according to U.N. estimates has 6,000 to 9,000 soldiers, now controls a Congolese area the size of Louisiana that is rich in gold and other minerals like coltan. That area includes Goma and Bukavu, two key hubs on the border with Rwanda.

It is unclear whether M23, which has denied any affiliation with Rwanda’s government, will heed the calls for a cease-fire. In the past, the group has declared unilateral cease-fires, only to violate them days later, including after its capture of Goma.

A spokesman for the group did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Neither Congo’s weak army nor international pressure, including a unanimous condemnation from the U.N. Security Council, has been able to stop M23’s advance. Rwanda’s government has held strong in its position despite Western nations’ suspension of development aid and some export activities because of its role in the conflict.

Mr. Ojewale said that the United States could have been in a position to convene peace talks, but given that it was not a priority for the Trump administration, Qatar stepped in. Previous attempts by President Emmanuel Macron of France have also failed.

“It appears now that the countries that actually have the leverage to bring warring African leaders to the table are countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. — who are completely outside the shores of the continent,” Mr. Ojewale said.

Experts say that a few options are now on the table, though none appear imminent. They include peace negotiations in Congo that could lead to a power-sharing agreement and more autonomy for eastern Congo, which is 1,000 miles from the capital, Kinshasa; the integration of M23 fighters into the Congolese army; the establishment of a buffer zone; or even Rwandan annexation of the region.

“Rwanda is in a bad place in terms of international pressure, but on the ground they’re not,” said Mr. Stearns. “This ‘no peace, no war’ situation could last for quite some time, and it’s not unfavorable to Rwanda.”

Russia has said it would agree to a limited cease-fire that would stop attacks on energy infrastructure, a proposal Kyiv has signaled it is open to but has yet to officially approve. An agreement would be the first significant step toward de-escalation since the start of the full-scale war more than three years ago.

On Wednesday, Ukraine and Russia traded accusations of attacks against each other’s energy infrastructure, a day after the proposed agreement was reported, highlighting the lack of trust between the two countries and how tenuous any deal would be.

Strikes against energy facilities have been a key part of both countries’ efforts to weaken the other. Russia has launched repeated attacks on Ukraine’s power grid to undermine its war effort by making life as difficult as possible for civilians, experts say. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian facilities are aimed at cutting the revenues of Russia’s sprawling oil industry, which have been used to fund the country’s military.

The Strategy Behind the Attacks

Russia began attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in October 2022 after it became clear that its initial plan to achieve a swift victory had failed. Moscow opted for a war of attrition in which Ukraine’s energy infrastructure became a key target.

Ukraine began repeatedly targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure in early 2024 to try to inflict pain on the heart of the Russian economy — its oil and gas industry — and to limit the supply of fuel to its military. Kyiv’s aim appeared to be twofold, experts say: to reduce Russia’s oil revenues, and to produce a psychological effect by causing large-scale fires at critical infrastructure facilities.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have been a key part of Moscow’s effort to bring the country to its knees. The goal, energy experts say, has been to choke off the energy resources that fuel Ukraine’s economy and ultimately its war effort. But it also appears intended to make life so unbearable for people — plunging them into cold and darkness — that it breaks their morale.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the former head of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national electricity operator, said Russia constantly changed its targets and tactics to undermine Ukraine’s ability to defend its energy system.

Moscow has used complex waves of long-range drones and ballistic missiles to overwhelm Kyiv’s air defenses. After Ukraine began reinforcing its main electricity substations with concrete bunkers, Russia shifted to striking thermal power plants directly and to attacking less protected substations connected to nuclear power plants.

The Effect on Russia

Over the past year, Ukrainian drones have flown deep into Russian territory, hitting oil refineries, depots, storage units, pipelines and pumping stations. The attacks have disrupted oil flows that pass through Russian seaport oil terminals and the Druzhba pipeline, which takes crude to some European countries.

That has threatened to undercut Moscow’s revenue from energy sales abroad. It has not been possible to independently determine how much of Russia’s oil revenues have been affected by the attacks.

The attacks on oil refineries reduced the country’s refining capacity by around 10 percent at one point, according to Reuters, which has been calculating the effect of damage.

But Russian oil giants have also been able to quickly repair some damage. According to Mikhail Krutikhin, an independent Russian energy analyst living in exile in Oslo, the damage inflicted on Russian oil refineries “has never been critical.”

Mr. Krutikhin said in a phone interview that Russia could always redirect crude oil flows away from a damaged refinery since the country has so many refineries. Sometimes, refineries had to start producing jet fuel that had more sulfur in it, he said.

“This is bad for the environment, but fighter jets can continue to fly,” Mr. Krutikhin said. He added, however, that the attacks could produce damage in the long term, because some parts of oil refineries might take years to get produced and installed.

Sergey Vakulenko, an energy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a research group, said Russian oil companies had to spend no more than $1 billion to repair the damage inflicted by Ukrainian attacks.

The Effect on Ukraine

Since the fall of 2022, Moscow has repeatedly used drones and missiles to strike substations that distribute electricity, power plants that generate it, and, more recently, gas facilities.

The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that damage to Ukraine’s energy sector has reached at least $14.6 billion. Several hydroelectric and thermal power plants have been completely destroyed by the attacks.

By the end of last year, Ukraine’s total electricity-generating capacity had dropped to some 22 gigawatts, less than half of its prewar level, according to DiXi Group, a Ukrainian energy research organization.

The power shortages have forced Ukraine to impose nationwide rolling blackouts to ease strain on the grid. On some days, neighborhoods in Kyiv, the capital, had as little as four hours of electricity. Many civilians have resorted to candles to light homes and relied on cellphone flashlights to navigate unlit streets.

Water pumping systems have sometimes failed, making life difficult for citizens as the flow of running water to their homes was cut. During the first winter of the war, long lines formed at wells in Kyiv as residents hauled jugs of water back to their unheated apartments.

Still, Russia has failed in its attempts to completely collapse Ukraine’s energy system. Ukraine has endured the assaults, thanks to Western-supplied air defenses that enabled it to gradually intercept more Russian missiles, round-the-clock work by engineers to repair vital equipment and the energy-saving ingenuity of residents.

Ukraine has also relied on its three operational nuclear power stations, which Russia has avoided targeting to prevent a nuclear disaster, to meet up to half of the country’s electricity needs during certain periods.

Who Has More to Gain?

Experts say it is difficult to determine which country stands to gain more from a cease-fire on attacks targeting energy infrastructure.

Mr. Kudrytskyi said a pause would give Ukraine crucial time to repair substations and power plants without the threat of new strikes.

The cease-fire would also give Ukraine time to replenish its stocks of critical spare equipment, including valuable transformers needed to transmit electricity from power stations to people’s homes. Ukraine has burned through its stocks in an effort to replace damaged equipment.

For the Kremlin, the suspension in Ukrainian attacks would mean that the war and its effects would appear even more distant to the Russian public. Moscow also would no longer need to worry that such attacks could damage critical oil infrastructure.

President Trump said he had “a very good telephone call” with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Wednesday to discuss next steps after the American leader’s discussion with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In a social media post, Mr. Trump said the call lasted about an hour and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, would soon give a more complete picture of what was discussed.

But his initial tone was notably positive and lacked the sharp criticisms he has levied against the Ukrainian leader in recent weeks, including during their heated Oval Office confrontation last month.

“Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with Mr. Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs,” Mr. Trump wrote in his post Wednesday. “We are very much on track.”

Mr. Zelensky had said he expected Mr. Trump to brief him on the American president’s conversation a day earlier with Mr. Putin, in which the Russian leader agreed to a limited cease-fire. That proposal, which would halt attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, fell short of a 30-day unconditional truce that Kyiv had agreed to at Washington’s urging.

On Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky appeared open to the latest offer of a limited cease-fire, but said he thought that such a truce would need U.S. monitoring to work.

“Just the assertion and the word of Putin that he will not strike energy sites is too little,” Mr. Zelensky said. “War has made us practical people.”

Ukraine would prepare a list of sites that would need to be protected — and if monitoring confirmed that “Russia doesn’t strike our objects, we will not strike theirs,” he told a news conference in Helsinki alongside Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb.

Underscoring the lack of trust between Ukraine and Russia, the two countries traded accusations on Wednesday about attacks against each others’ energy infrastructure.

Mr. Zelensky has characterized some of the conditions Mr. Putin has set for a broader cease-fire — such as a demand for a complete cessation of foreign military and intelligence aid to Ukraine — as an attempt to stall for time so that Russia can improve its forces’ positions on the battlefield and its negotiating hand.

The Ukrainian president reiterated that point after the call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, saying that in setting conditions, Russia had made clear it was unwilling to end the war.

Mr. Zelensky has toed a careful line with the White House since a disastrous Feb. 28 meeting in the Oval Office, where he was accused by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance of not being sufficiently grateful for U.S. support. The Trump administration temporarily suspended all military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine in the aftermath of the meeting — and Mr. Zelensky has since sought to smooth over relations.

Ukraine’s European allies have cautiously welcomed any moves toward a cease-fire, while pledging further support for Kyiv and echoing concerns about Russia’s conditions.

“It’s a yes or a no. No buts, no conditions,” Mr. Stubb, Finland’s president, told the news conference on Wednesday. “Ukraine accepted a cease-fire without any form of conditions. If Russia refuses to agree, we need to increase our efforts to strengthen Ukraine and to ratchet up pressure on Russia.”

The 30-day cease-fire proposal that Ukraine had agreed to after talks with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia was more extensive. It would have applied to land, air and sea — the first cessation of hostilities since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago. That monthlong truce, Mr. Zelensky has said, was meant to give time for fuller negotiations about a longer-term peace.

On Wednesday, he reiterated that Ukraine would have “red lines” going into any such talks.

“For us, a red line is the recognition of Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories as Russian,” he said. “We will not agree to that.”

Anastasia Kuznietsova and Johanna Lemola contributed reporting.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia agreed on Tuesday during a phone call with President Trump to temporarily halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to the Kremlin.

That fell short of the unconditional 30-day cease-fire that Ukraine had already agreed to, at the urging of the Trump administration.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the two leaders spoke for more than two hours. It was their first known conversation since Ukraine agreed to support a U.S.-backed monthlong cease-fire, as long as Russia does the same. While Mr. Trump has stated his desire to broker a truce as quickly as possible, Mr. Putin has seemed to be seeking more concessions.

Tuesday evening, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said President Putin had “effectively rejected the proposal for a full cease-fire” backed by the U.S. and Ukraine.

Mr. Putin made “a number of significant points” about the 30-day cease-fire proposal in the call, according to Tass. That included reiterating to Mr. Trump that a complete cessation of military aid to Kyiv is the key condition for solving the conflict, Tass added.

The cease-fire proposal on the table

A week ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, sat down for talks in Saudi Arabia with a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

After more than eight hours of talks, the United States and Ukraine issued a joint statement saying that Kyiv would support the Trump administration’s proposal for a 30-day cease-fire with Russia, subject to Russia’s approval. The United States said it would immediately resume providing military aid and intelligence to Ukraine, which the Trump administration had suspended after an explosive U.S.-Ukraine meeting at the White House.

The United States and Ukraine also agreed to conclude “as soon as possible” a deal to develop Ukraine’s critical mineral resources.

Russia’s stance

Before his call with Mr. Trump, the Russian leader had said the idea for a cease-fire was “the right one and we definitely support it” — but laid out numerous conditions that could delay or derail any truce. That included demands that Ukraine cease mobilizing new soldiers, training troops or importing weapons for the duration of any pause in fighting.

Ukrainian officials have dismissed Mr. Putin’s stance as a cynical ploy to use a pause in fighting to strengthen Russian forces, while preventing Ukraine from doing the same.

While the Russian description of Tuesday’s two-hour conversation said that Mr. Putin reiterated to Mr. Trump that a complete cessation of military aid to Kyiv is the key condition for ending the conflict, the White House made no mention of that demand, or any discussions over what territory Russia might retain after its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its seizure of about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory.

Conversation topics

Mr. Trump had said on Sunday night that he expected to discuss territorial issues with Mr. Putin as well as the fate of Ukrainian power plants. He also noted that there had already been discussions about “dividing up certain assets.”

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end,” Mr. Trump said. “Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.”

Mr. Trump did not elaborate on what he meant by assets or power plants, but his comments came on the same day Mr. Witkoff mentioned a “nuclear reactor” in an interview with CBS News.

That appeared be a reference to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, which Russia seized early in the war and still controls. The six-reactor plant is Europe’s largest, and its proximity to frontline fighting has long raised concerns about the risk of a radiological disaster.

It was not immediately clear, though, whether discussion about the power plant would focus on Russia giving it up — or finding a way to keep it under any truce.

The power plant sits near the Dnipro River in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia has declared it annexed, despite controlling only part of its territory. Surrendering the plant to Ukraine would mean ceding territory Russia considers its own. It would also give Kyiv’s troops a foothold in a Russian-controlled area that has been relatively protected from Ukrainian attacks thanks to the natural barrier of the large Dnipro River.

At the same time, energy experts say, the nuclear plant is in poor condition after three years of war and restoring full operations would require a lot of time and investment from Russia. That could mean Russia might see an incentive to try trading it in negotiations for something else, such as the easing of Western sanctions on the Russian economy, experts say.

State of the war

Mr. Zelensky has accused Mr. Putin of stalling so that Russia’s army can advance on the battlefield and strengthen his hand in cease-fire talks.

Moscow’s push to drive out Ukrainian troops from most of the Kursk region of Russia in recent days has deprived Kyiv of an important bargaining chip in any potential negotiations.

The moves in Kursk give Russia an opportunity to show Mr. Trump that it holds the momentum on the battlefield. And battlefield maps compiled by both Russian and Western groups analyzing combat footage and satellite images show that Russian forces have already crossed into Ukraine’s Sumy region from Kursk, in what analysts say may be an effort to flank and encircle the remaining Ukrainian troops in Kursk or open a new front in the war.

Mr. Zelensky has accused Russia to preparing to mount a larger offensive into the Sumy region, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people.

Despite the setbacks in Kursk, Kyiv’s forces have stalled a Russian offensive in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine and started to win back small patches of land, according to military analysts and Ukrainian soldiers. Military analysts, however, have been debating whether, after more than 15 months on the offensive, Russian brigades are exhausted or are regrouping for a renewed push.

Recent U.S.-Ukraine tensions

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has realigned American foreign policy seemingly in Russia’s favor — including by echoing a Kremlin talking point that blamed Kyiv for starting the war.

That raised alarm in Ukraine about whether Mr. Trump would taper the flow of U.S. military assistance. Strain in the relationship burst into public view on Feb. 28, when Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office, saying he was not grateful enough for U.S. support.

Since then, Ukraine has sought to smooth over relations with the Trump administration, and Mr. Zelensky has repeatedly expressed gratitude for American assistance.

Concessions and guarantees

Mr. Rubio has said that Ukraine would have to make concessions over land that Russia had taken since 2014 as part of any agreement to end the war. But he also said that it would be imperative in talks with Moscow to determine what Russia was willing to concede.

Before agreeing to the U.S.-backed proposal for an unconditional cease-fire, Ukraine had insisted that any cease-fire include security guarantees, but there has been no indication since that any such guarantees would be provided before any interim cease-fire would take effect.

European allies have pledged further support to Kyiv. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain has said he would continue pressing Mr. Trump for American security guarantees — a lobbying effort that he shares with President Emmanuel Macron of France. Britain and France have already pledged to contribute troops to a peacekeeping force and are trying to enlist other countries across Europe to do the same.

Turkey arrested the top political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on accusations of corruption and terrorism on Wednesday, days before he was set to be named the opposition’s candidate in the next presidential election.

The opposition blasted the arrest of the rival, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of Istanbul, as politically motivated and said that the government was trying to remove a potential political threat to Mr. Erdogan.

Mr. Imamoglu, 54, accused Mr. Erdogan, his associates and state prosecutors of orchestrating his arrest.

“This immoral and tyrannical approach will undoubtedly be overturned by the will and resilience of our people,” he said in a voice message sent when the police were at his home to arrest him and shared by his aides.

In a video shared on social media, also before his arrest, Mr. Imamoglu spoke from inside his closet as he knotted his tie and said that the government was “usurping the will of the people.”

“We are facing great tyranny,” he said. “But I want you to know that I will not be discouraged.”

Critics have long accused Mr. Erdogan, who became prime minister in 2003 and president in 2014, of using state institutions, including the courts and the security services, to undermine his political rivals. Mr. Erdogan’s defenders cite his history of electoral victories as proof of his popularity.

Mr. Imamoglu had on three occasions since 2019 beaten candidates chosen by Mr. Erdogan to run Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic powerhouse. And Turkey’s main opposition party was expected to formally nominate him as its presidential candidate during a primary on Sunday.

The head of the main opposition party, Ozgur Ozel, called on party members to go ahead with the scheduled primary vote.

“We are faced with a coup attempt against our next president,” Mr. Ozel wrote on social media.

Turkey’s next presidential election is scheduled for 2028, but Parliament is widely expected to call for early elections before then.

Mr. Erdogan is in the second of the two terms he is allowed by the Constitution. But an early election would allow him to run again, on the grounds that he did not complete his second term. Many in the opposition also want an early vote because they believe that chronic inflation, which has been exacerbated by Mr. Erdogan’s policies, will help them at the polls.

Mr. Erdogan, 71, and officials in his ruling Justice and Development Party have not publicly discussed who their candidate will be. But Mr. Erdogan has been Turkey’s predominate politician for more than two decades, and he has no clear successor. So he is widely expected to run.

Sinem Adar, a Turkey expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said the government had been laying the groundwork to exclude Mr. Imamoglu from the race for some time, given the challenge he would pose to Mr. Erdogan and the ruling party’s poor showing in local elections last year.

“There is a lot of discontent in the population,” she said.

But the prevailing international mood, including the rise of far-right parties in Europe and the Trump administration’s nationalist focus, could make it easier for Mr. Erdogan to act against his rivals.

“The international context and the geopolitics help Erdogan double down on the dissidents, on the opposition,” Ms. Adar said.

The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, which promotes local democracy on the continent, condemned the arrest, saying that it appeared aimed at exerting “pressure on a political figure considered as one of the main candidates in forthcoming presidential elections.”

Police arrested Mr. Imamoglu just after dawn at his house. Prosecutors said that related arrest warrants had been issued for more than 100 people, and police also detained two Istanbul district mayors and a number of Mr. Imamoglu’s senior aides.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said that Mr. Imamoglu was accused of leading a criminal organization. Prosecutors say he took part in corrupt practices in municipal business and accused him of engaging in bribery, fraud, money laundering, personal enrichment and bid rigging.

He also faces accusations of aiding a terrorist organization linked to his coordination with a pro-Kurdish political party during last year’s municipal elections, prosecutors said. Mr. Imamoglu won that election handily against a candidate backed by Mr. Erdogan.

Mr. Imamoglu has yet to be indicted on specific charges related to these accusations, but he could be kept in detention while prosecutors pursue their investigation.

The office of Istanbul’s governor, who is appointed by Mr. Erdogan, took steps on Wednesday to head off protests about the arrests.

Public demonstrations have been banned in the city for four days and two subway stations were closed, including in Taksim Square, a central transportation hub and large plaza where rallies have often been held.

Turkey also restricted access to social media platforms including X, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitor.

By midafternoon, small, scattered protests had broken out around Istanbul.

Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest follows numerous court cases and other procedural moves against him that the opposition says are aimed at eliminating him as a political force.

In recent years, he has faced charges of corruption during his previous role as an Istanbul district mayor, and he is appealing a 2022 conviction on charges of insulting judges on the Supreme Electoral Council, which oversees elections.

Some of the cases against him could result in his being temporarily barred from politics, meaning that he could be ousted as mayor and prohibited from running for president.

In another move that Mr. Imamoglu’s supporters say seeks to exclude him from the presidential race, his alma mater, Istanbul University, announced on Tuesday that it had annulled his diploma, citing improper procedures in his transfer in 1990 from a university in Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus.

The Turkish Constitution stipulates that the president must be a university graduate.

Mr. Imamoglu has argued that there was nothing improper about his transfer and that a previous government inquiry into the matter had found nothing amiss.

Last month, the Istanbul prosecutor’s office requested a new inquiry, which led to the cancellation, a decision that Mr. Imamoglu is expected to appeal.