Russia Matters, 4/18/25

1. Marco Rubio warned on April 18 the U.S. will walk away from efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal unless there are clear signs of progress in the next several days, according to Reuters and WP. Trump then said Rubio was “right in saying” that the U.S. wants to see the Russia-Ukraine war come to an end. Asked how to identify how many days that would be, Trump said, “No specific numbers of days, but quickly, we want to get it done,” according to NBC. On the prior day, Rubio and other U.S. officials¹ attended a meeting with European leaders in Paris where they outline of terms to end the fighting and ease sanctions on Moscow in the event of a lasting ceasefire, according to Bloomberg. The proposal would effectively freeze the war, with Ukrainian territories now occupied by Russia remaining under Moscow’s control while Kyiv’s aspirations of joining NATO would also be off the table, according to this news agency. Rubio said he spoke with Sergei Lavrov to brief him on elements of the U.S. peace framework and that the Europeans had a central role to play in any peace pact, especially as their sanctions on Russia would likely need to be lifted to secure an accord, according to Reuters. Speaking on April 15 Trump’s special envoy Witkoff said Putin is open to a “permanent peace” deal with Ukraine and claimed the peace deal currently under discussion involves “five territories,” referring to Ukrainian regions currently occupied by Russian forces. In response to Witkoff’s comments, Zelensky said that recognizing any of Ukraine’s occupied territories as Russian is a “red line” for Kyiv.
2. Two Russian ballistic missiles struck Ukraine’s city of Sumy on Palm Sunday, killing 36 and injuring over 119. Donald Trump called the strike “horrible,” but noted that he was told Russia “made a mistake” and his administration told U.S. allies it couldn’t sign a G7 draft statement denouncing the April 13 attack. Trump also blamed Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky² for the war,³ which he claimed to have left millions dead.⁴ For his part, Zelenskyy rejected Trump’s accusations and urged the U.S. leader to visit Ukraine and see the devastation caused by Russia himself. Russia’s Sergei Lavrov admitted to the strike, but claimed that it was targeting a gathering of Ukrainian military. Ukrainian authorities insisted Russian forces targeted civilians in the strike on Sumy, but An Ukrainian soldier described to WP how he was sitting at a military medal ceremony in a university building basement Sunday when two Russian ballistic missiles tore through the surrounding area in Sumy. Ukrainian government also fired Volodymyr Artiukh from the post of the Sumy Oblast governor following the strikes.⁵
3. Russia gained 142 square miles of Ukraine’s territory (about 1 1/2 Nantucket islands) in the past month, and its overall pace of advance has picked back up this week, according to the April 16 issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. This week’s gain of 50 square miles is nearly double the prior week’s advance of 29 square miles, according to the card. As of April 16 Russian forces occupied 112,581 square km (43,468 square miles), which constituted 18.65% of Ukraine’s territory and which is roughly equivalent to the state of Ohio, according to Ukraine’s DeepState OSINT group’s map.
4. Russia’s ruble has surged to become the best performing global currency, posting this year’s strongest gains against the dollar to outpace even the traditional safe haven of gold according to Bloomberg. The ruble has strengthened 38% versus the dollar on the over-the-counter market since the beginning of this year, data compiled by Bloomberg shows. The Russian ruble equaled 0.01216 U.S. dollars on April 14, 2025, appreciating by 3% since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, according to RM’s calculations.
5. Americans are now split on whether Russia is an ‘enemy,’ according to Pew.