Several countries offered to host talks between Putin and Trump, Ushakov says
MOSCOW – Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said on Monday that several countries had already offered to host talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, though he declined to say which.
Trump has said he wants to swiftly end the war in Ukraine, though he has yet to set out publicly how he plans to do so. On the other hand, Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with Trump and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.
The Russian president, however, said any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the early weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy previously said there were no Istanbul agreements between Ukraine and Russia during a press conference at the European Council meeting in Brussels.
“Ukraine did not agree to the ultimatum from the Russian Federation,” Zelenskiy said, as some Ukrainian politicians view the draft deal as a form of capitulation that would have undermined Ukraine’s military and political ambitions.
