Putin emerges as winner in Ukraine peace talks while marking 25 years at the helm

Dream of restoring Russia to great power status about to come true with US help

- Jonathan Eyal

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the signing of the first partial ceasefire agreement between his country and Ukraine could not have been better timed.

The terms of the agreement are already disputed, and the deal is not the end of the war.

But Mr Putin appears to have persuaded the US that any end to the hostilities will be tied to a lifting of the West's crippling economic sanctions on Russia.

And this diplomatic achievement comes at a historic moment, just as Mr Putin celebrates 25 years from when he was first elected as Russia's president.

During the past quarter of a century, he has seen off an entire generation of Western leaders, including four US presidents.

He is already the third longest-ruling Russian leader in the past two centuries, after Czar Nicholas I and Joseph Stalin.

And as things currently stand, only the immutable force of biology can remove Mr Putin from his gilded Kremlin palace in Moscow.

The US claimed on March 25 that it had brokered an agreement between the two countries to halt military activity in the Black Sea after US officials met separately with counterparts from Russia and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh.

What has actually been agreed on remains unclear.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already accused Russia of "lying" about the terms of the deal.

And US President Donald Trump has yet to signal his acceptance of Russia's conditions.

"We're thinking about all of them right now," Mr Trump told reporters soon after the end of the Riyadh discussions.

Ultimately, the Ukrainians and Russians signed the deal not because either side believed the war was over, but because both wished to remain on good terms with President Trump.

Having defused a serious breakdown in his personal relations with Mr Trump, Mr Zelensky could not afford to rebuff US efforts to broker a ceasefire.