After hours of negotiations that ended with Ukrainian officials acquiescing to a proposed 30-day cease-fire with Russia, it was not until the flight home that they received the news they most wanted to hear: American military assistance was flowing again.
“I will only say that there is no better reward for such a crazy day than to learn, while already sitting on the plane, a short dry confirmation” that military aid had restarted, Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote on social media after talks with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia.
The resumption of U.S. weapons deliveries and intelligence sharing was one outcome of the meeting on Tuesday in the coastal city of Jeddah. Ukraine’s acceptance of the Trump administration’s proposed cease-fire — should Russia do the same — was the other.
While Ukrainians were deeply skeptical that Russia would accept the proposal for a cease-fire, the unfreezing of critical American assistance was widely seen as a positive development that could help mend the ruptured relationship between Kyiv and Washington.
On Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine seemingly took care to publicly express gratitude again to President Trump, after he was accused of not being appreciative enough during the disastrous Oval Office meeting last month with the American president that led to the suspension of U.S. assistance.
“The U.S. wanted us to show we want a fast peace, and we showed it,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv, the capital.
He said Mr. Trump had played a role in the talks from afar, speaking to the U.S. delegation midway through the negotiations as the Ukrainian leader was in touch with his. It took more than eight hours for the American and Ukrainian officials to reach an agreement.
“Now the ball is in Russia’s court,” Mr. Zelensky said on Wednesday, echoing comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the meeting.
The Kremlin has not said whether it will agree to the 30-day cease-fire. If Russia does not, Mr. Zelensky said, he expects “strong moves” from the Trump administration.
“I don’t know details yet, but we are talking about sanctions and strengthening Ukraine,” he told reporters.
His comments appeared to reflect hope that the White House, which even before the sudden suspension of aid had seemed to more closely align itself with the Kremlin, might be able to ultimately bring pressure to end to the fighting.
Still, the broader Ukrainian skepticism is informed by history: Russia violated two previous cease-fires, reached in 2014 and 2015, and denied an intention to invade just days before doing so in 2022.
“In my opinion, it will be like before when they introduced the cease-fire,” said Oleksandr Kovinko, a soldier fighting in eastern Ukraine. “We adhere to it, the enemy does not. And how it will actually be, it’s hard to imagine and predict.”
And for the Ukrainians who feel betrayed by the Trump administration’s recent moves, there was a fear that the United States might not be an honest broker.
“I have no hope that the U.S.A. has not completely shifted to Russia’s side,” said Yulia Podkydysheva, 31, a charity worker reached by phone in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine.
Everyone, Ms. Podkydysheva said, could use 30 days “to breathe some air and see the light” after three years of unrelenting bombardment. But she does not think that rest will last.
“It will most likely be about some next round of struggle,” she said.
As questions swirled over whether the Kremlin would ultimately accept the proposal, the war raged on.
Fierce fighting was reported up and down the eastern front in Ukraine.
And Russian forces were battling Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region of Russia while maintaining their bombardment of military and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine. Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia launched three ballistic missiles and 133 strike drones late Tuesday and early Wednesday.
One of the missiles slammed into a civilian ship in the port city of Odesa at around the same time as the cease-fire proposal announcement was made in Saudi Arabia and killed four crew members, according to the Ukrainian authorities. A missile strike later killed one person and wounded more than a dozen others in the city of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine — Mr. Zelensky’s hometown.
Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting.
