Hello and welcome to Newsout from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London.

I'm James Menendez. And we're going to begin once again in Russia because the diplomatic maneuverings over Ukraine are picking up pace.

President Trump's special envoy, Steve Wickhoff, has already arrived in Moscow to discuss the administration's proposal for a 30-day initial ceasefire, something that Keeves already accepted in principle.

Well, yesterday, President Putin traveled to Russia's Kersk region along the border with Ukraine.

That was partially occupied by Ukrainian troops last year.

But the Kremlin says that Russian forces are now close to pushing

them out altogether. We'll be hearing more about that in just a moment. And on the truce proposal,

the mood music isn't great. So far, a top Kremlin aide, Yuri Osharkov, is reported to have already

told the Americans that a ceasefire would simply be a chance for Ukrainian forces to regroup.

And speaking at a news conference earlier, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry,

Maria Zakharova, said that Moscow explicitly rejected the use of foreign peacekeepers on Ukrainian soil.

It is absolutely unacceptable to us that army units of other states are stationed in Ukraine under any flag,

be it foreign contingents of military bases or some kind of peacekeeping operations,

proposed by those who have removed the word peacekeeper and peace from their vocabulary altogether.

So is this Osama, Moscow Moscow starting to reject Washington's proposal,

or perhaps just a negotiating tactic?

A question I put to BBC Russians, Lisa Fokt, who is based in Berlin.

It's very hard to say at this point.

You already quoted Yerushakov, who former ambassador to Washington

and Vladimir Putin's aid, who appeared to be skeptical of this proposal. But just moments ago,

he actually said something that looks like he east his stance a little bit. He said, and I'm going

to quote, that the document seems to be rushed, and we will need to work on it, think it through,

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