BEIRUT, Lebanon — To the starving residents and rebel fighters in the bitterly contested suburbs of Damascus, the offer from the Syrian government can be tempting enough to overcome their deep mistrust: a cease-fire accompanied by the delivery of food supplies, if they agree to give up their heavy weapons and let state-run news media show the government’s flag flying over their town.

However, residents and rebel officials in some of the communities described in interviews a disturbing pattern in which the government has used the cease-fires as cover for an operation intended to attain a victory it could not achieve any other way.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said this week that they would work for localized cease-fires — or rather, an internationally backed version of them — ahead of peace talks on Syria scheduled to open next week in Switzerland. Mr. Kerry on Thursday also offered an unusual assurance that the United States had not pulled back from its goal of establishing a transitional government that did not include President Bashar al-Assad.

For Russia, the strategy builds on its effort to portray Mr. Assad as a responsible leader whom the West can deal with, begun last year with the deal to dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons.