The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | March 13th, 2025: Putin Pours Cold Water On Ceasefire Hopes & Houthis Threaten To Resume Attacks On Israeli Vessels
13 Mar 2025
In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: First, U.S. officials have arrived in Moscow to try and sell the Kremlin on a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine, but Russian President Vladimir Putin is already pushing back on the proposal, saying it does not go far enough. Later in the show, as the Iranian-backed Houthi militants of Yemen once again threaten to resume attacks on Israeli vessels operating in Mideast waters, the group is taking heightened measures to safeguard their leader from suffering the same fate as the chiefs of Hezbollah and Hamas. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
It's Thursday, the 13th of March. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. Leading off, U.S. officials have arrived in Moscow to try and sell the Kremlin on a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine. But Russian President Putin, well, he's already pushing back on the proposal, saying that it does not go far enough.
I know, it's shocking that Putin wouldn't just quickly agree to a ceasefire when he believes he has the upper hand and Kyiv isn't holding any cards. Later in the show, as the Iranian-backed Houthi militants of Yemen once again threaten to resume attacks on Israeli ships,
The group is taking heightened measures to safeguard their leader from suffering the same fate as the leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. U.S. officials are in Moscow today to make a direct appeal to Russian leaders to agree to a temporary ceasefire with Ukraine, but the talks may be doomed before they even get underway.
As we noted on this morning's PDB, Kremlin officials appeared less than enthused about the recent U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine endorsed by leaders in Kyiv, though they had yet to issue a formal response, saying they wanted to hear more details from the Trump administration.
Well, on Thursday, Russian President Putin gave a press conference where he said Moscow would not agree to an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine, instead advocating for a deal that leads to a, quote, lasting peace and the elimination of the root causes of the war, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. But wait, I thought Russia was the root cause of the war.
Putin said that while Russia agrees with the proposal for a ceasefire in principle, well, there are nuances and also serious issues that still need to be resolved before the process can move forward. Everything from nuances to serious issues, that pretty much covers the whole spectrum.
He listed a number of these issues, including resolving the Ukrainian incursion in Russia's Kursk region and a clear plan for the West on how they plan to enforce the ceasefire and monitor potential violations. Putin said, quote, the idea itself is good and we, of course, support it, but there are questions we have to discuss, end quote.
He suggested there would need to be additional negotiations to resolve these outstanding issues with the U.S. and U.S. allies and hinted at holding a phone call with President Trump.
Putin's response came as Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Moscow to meet with the Russian leader and other Kremlin officials to try to move the needle on the ceasefire, though by all accounts, he does have his work cut out for him.
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