Russian President Vladimir Putin is offering highly conditional support for the Trump administration’s proposed 30-day Russia-Ukraine ceasefire, saying he backs the idea in principle but that several difficult issues — including the presence of Ukrainian troops inside Russia’s Kursk region — must be addressed before he’ll sign on formally.

In remarks Thursday evening, Mr. Putin said the Kursk matter, along with Western arms shipments to Ukraine, and whether a pause in fighting will genuinely lead to a permanent peace acceptable to the Kremlin are all “questions that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk them through with our American colleagues and partners.”

The Russian president also said he expected to talk directly to President Trump soon. The high-stakes development marks a potential milestone in Mr. Trump’s promise to end the war. The president, who met Thursday with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Washington, told reporters Mr. Putin’s response was “promising.”

Sources tell Threat Status a Trump-Putin meeting may occur soon in Saudi Arabia. Following a phone call with Mr. Putin in mid-February, Mr. Trump told reporters he anticipated such a meeting with the Russian president.

Is there a bigger, even more ambitious goal beneath Mr. Trump’s push for a peace deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war? Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, made the case during an exclusive interview on the Threat Status weekly podcast that he believes Mr. Trump is several steps ahead of his adversaries and critics.

“Trump plays four-dimensional chess,” said Mr. Green, a Tennessee Republican who has emerged as a powerful Capitol Hill backer of many of the Trump administration’s policies, including its aggressive push to secure a ceasefire deal in Ukraine.

“What if there’s a bigger goal here?” the congressman said on the latest episode of the podcast. “Let’s get a peace deal in Ukraine and then let’s put a wedge between Russia and China.”

That so-called “wedge strategy,” Mr. Green said, could pay dividends down the road in helping the administration solve other thorny, complex geopolitical challenges, possibly including Iran’s nuclear program.

“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if that wedge went between Russia and China, and oh by the way, Russia became a negotiator to help us with Iran? The point I’m making is there’s stuff going on below the surface that people don’t, the idiot press, doesn’t get,” Mr. Green said.

The president has made clear he views himself as a 21st-century peacemaker, perhaps the only leader capable of ending wars in Europe and the Middle East, and forestalling a potential clash with China.

If he succeeds in those goals, could that lead to a significant reduction in America’s defense spending? White House reporter Mallory Wilson tackles that question with an in-depth examination of whether the U.S. could enjoy a “peace dividend,” or a reduction in defense spending that could see tens of billions of dollars funneled away from defense and toward other domestic priorities.

Mr. Trump has said he wants annual defense spending cuts for the next four years. Some estimates put total annual U.S. defense spending at more than $916 billion, which accounts for nearly half of the federal government’s total discretionary spending. An internal Pentagon memo last month suggested at least $50 billion in defense spending cuts this year alone, though congressional Republicans almost surely will oppose such cuts.

Threat Status is closely tracking whether Mr. Trump — or tech billionaire Elon Musk, and his Department of Government Efficiency — follow through with significant cuts in the defense budget. Such cuts would introduce more uncertainty into the defense industry at an already volatile economic moment. 

Disagreements inside the Republican Party over defense spending were very much in the spotlight this week. The stopgap spending bill passed this week by the GOP-controlled House of Representatives to avoid an imminent government shutdown appeared Friday morning to have enough Democratic support to achieve Senate approval. However, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker says the bill won’t provide enough funding to achieve Mr. Trump’s plans to rebuild the military.

The Mississippi Republican said at a hearing Wednesday that the continuing resolution to fund operations through the end of the fiscal year, won’t make up for a real decrease in military spending. The Senate will have to push for more Pentagon spending during the reconciliation process, Mr. Wicker said, adding that even with some additional funding tacked on, the stopgap bill doesn’t provide adequate money to defend against rising threats to U.S. national security from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

A permanent end to the Russia-Ukraine war may still be far off, but some prominent European political figures believe the door is open to a “new beginning” in Europe and a potential restart for relations between the East and the West.

Jan Figel, a former European Union commissioner, special envoy and deputy prime minister of Slovakia, writes in a new op-ed for The Washington Times that economic cooperation — not another Cold War-style arms race — is the path to prosperity for all stakeholders.

“Calls are voiced from the capitals of Western Europe to increase armaments, rearm Europe and increase defense spending,” he writes. “This shift will not strengthen indebted states and weakened economies. With a deterrence policy, we may win or draw in this second cold war, but we will surely not win peace.”

Mr. Figel, now the chair of the Clementy Foundation’s Scientific Committee, argues that this may be a moment to establish a new level of  21st-century economic cooperation that can benefit all sides. The vehicle to get there, he said, could be a comprehensive Russia-Ukraine peace deal.

“The crisis may turn into a historical disaster or into a positive way out, a new beginning,” he writes. “Within the framework of a great deal, an acceptable solution for peace in Ukraine, for the return of refugees, and for dynamic and successful reconstruction of the destroyed territories will be found more easily and quickly.”

• March 17-19 — 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, ARPA-E

• March 19 — Strategic Japan 2025: Norms in New Technological Domains, Center for Strategic and International Studies 

• March 20 — What’s next for U.S. defense strategy and spending? Brookings Institution 

• March 25 — Building America’s Missile Defense Shield, The Heritage Foundation

• March 27 — Software-defined warfare blueprint, Atlantic Council