Russian President Vladimir Putin says he reached “understandings” with US President Donald Trump over the end of the Ukraine war at their meeting in Alaska last month.
But he did not say whether he would agree to peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky brokered by Trump, who had apparently given Monday as a deadline for Putin’s response.
Speaking during a summit in China, Putin continued to defend his decision to invade Ukraine, once again blaming the war on the West.
Following the Alaska meeting, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Putin had agreed to security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a potential future peace deal, though Moscow has yet to confirm this.
Putin was speaking in Tianjin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, where he met Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi.
He thanked the Chinese and Indian leaders for their support and their efforts to “facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis“.
China and India are the biggest buyers of Russian crude oil, attracting criticism from the West that they are propping up the Russian economy, which has been battered by the war effort.
In his speech, Putin also said that the “understandings reached” at his meeting with Trump in Alaska are “I hope, moving in this direction, opening the way to peace in Ukraine”.
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At the same time, he reiterated his view that “this crisis wasn’t triggered by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but was a result of a coup in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West”.
He also attributed the war to “the West’s constant attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO”.
The Russian president has consistently opposed the idea of Ukraine joining the Western military alliance.
It was in 2014 that Putin seized Crimea and Russian proxies grabbed part of eastern Ukraine.
Years later, in February 2022, Putin then ordered Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s latest comments come days after Russia launched its second-largest aerial attack on Ukraine in the war.
On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that Putin faced a Monday deadline set by Trump to agree to peace talks with Zelensky.
If the Russian leader does not agree, “it will show again President Putin has played President Trump”, said Macron.
