Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to talk to US counterpart Donald Trump but is waiting for signals from Washington first, the Kremlin said on Friday, fuelling expectations the two would be in contact.
The Ukraine war has plunged relations between the two nuclear powers to their lowest levels since the Cold War, with Trump repeatedly promising to end the fighting with a “deal”.
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He told reporters on Thursday he would meet Putin “immediately”, and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to negotiate.
“Putin is ready. We are waiting for signals,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Trump’s overtures.
Peskov said that he could not comment further on a possible meeting between the leaders, saying it was “hard to read coffee grounds” to predict the future.
Trump has threatened Russia with tougher economic sanctions if it does not agree to end its nearly three-year offensive.
“If they don’t settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I’m going to put massive tariffs on Russia, and massive taxes, and also big sanctions,” the Republican said during a Fox News interview on Thursday.
The Kremlin rejected Trump’s claim that the war in Ukraine could be ended by lowering the price of oil used to fund Moscow’s budget, saying: “This conflict does not depend on oil prices.”
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Trump had said that he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower oil prices, saying: “If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately.”
British Defence Intelligence Update Ukraine 23 January 2025
Peskov said the war was instead based on “threats to Russia’s national security”, “threats to Russians” living in Ukraine and “the lack of desire and complete refusal of Americans and Europeans to listen to Russia’s concerns”.
Moscow and Kyiv are both vying to gain the upper hand ahead of possible negotiations in the early days of Trump’s administration.
Prior to his inauguration, Trump vowed to end the Ukraine war immediately upon taking office, raising concerns in Ukraine it would be forced to make major territorial concessions to Russia.
Moscow has been advancing on the battlefield for months, closing in on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
On Friday, Russia said its forces captured the village of Tymofiivka about 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of the key industrial hub.
--Moscow urges Trump to resume nuclear disarmament talks ‘as soon as possible’--
The Kremlin said Friday it wanted to resume nuclear disarmament talks with US President Donald Trump’s administration “as soon as possible”, after tensions over the Ukraine war left negotiations at an impasse.
Moscow pulled out of the last remaining arms control agreement with Washington, called “New START”, in 2023 amid a sharp deterioration in relations between the two countries.
Both have indicated they will unilaterally adhere to the warhead limits outlined in the treaty until 2026, but they are yet to agree on a replacement and talks have stalled for months.
“We are interested in starting this negotiation process as soon as possible,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“The ball is in the Americans’ court, who have stopped all substantive contacts.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ramped up his nuclear rhetoric since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, signing a decree last year lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
New START restricted the former Cold War rivals to a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads each.
In 2019 the two powers withdrew from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty concluded by then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which limited the use of medium-range missiles, both conventional and nuclear.
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