Moscow:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he had spoken with our Ukrainian counterpart Donald Trump and praised him as a “smart” leader who prevented a conflict from starting in 2022.
Kiev reacted quickly, warning that it would be excluded from negotiations.
Russian leaders did not say when the speech would take place, and the Kremlin said Trump was willing to meet with Putin on Thursday, even though he announced Thursday that he would meet with Putin “soon.” I said I was still waiting for the “signal.”
“We have always said, and I would like to emphasize this again: we are ready for these negotiations on the issue of Ukraine,” Putin told reporters on Russia’s state television.
Trump was praised as a “sensible” and “pragmatic” man and repeated the Republican Party’s baseless claim that Putin won the US presidential election against Joe Biden in 2020.
“If his victory had not been stolen in 2020, if he had been president, there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that emerged in 2022,” Putin said.
pressure from trump
The nearly three-year-old conflict in Ukraine has brought relations to the lowest level between the two nuclear powers since the Cold War.
Trump, who took office on Monday, called the conflict “stupid” and threatened Russia with tougher economic sanctions if it did not agree to stop the attacks.
“If we don’t resolve this war soon, like very soon, I’m going to put a lot of tariffs and a lot of taxes and a lot of sanctions on Russia,” the Republican said in a Thursday interview on Fox News. mentioned in.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the same day, Trump said he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower oil prices, claiming, “If prices come down, the Russia-Ukranian war will end quickly.” .
Putin was pushed back by Trump’s claim that lower oil prices could facilitate an end to the conflict.
“I have a hard time imagining decisions being made that are harmful to the American economy,” Putin said Friday.
“Back to reality”
Neither side has shown any signs of escalating hostility since Trump’s inauguration, despite the president’s claims to end the conflict in “24 hours.”
Kiev on Friday warned against being excluded from any negotiations.
“He (Putin) wants to negotiate the fate of Europe – without Europe, he wants to talk about Ukraine without Ukraine,” said Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
“This is not going to happen. Putin needs to come back to reality himself or he needs to come back. This is not the way it works in the modern world.”
A Russian air attack near Kiev killed three people and injured several others, Ukrainian officials said Friday, as Ukraine hit at least 12 Russian regions with 120 drones, including the capital Moscow.
The Kremlin has launched drone or missile attacks in Kiev almost every day since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, ostensibly targeting military and energy facilities.
“Three people were killed in an enemy attack in the Kiev region,” emergency services said in a statement on social media.
Drone fragments hit a 10-storey residential building, the local chief said, adding that private property was also hit.
Official images from the scene showed black smoke billowing from the strike-damaged residential building as rescue workers pulled out the victims’ bodies.
In Russia, the Ukrainian military said it launched an overnight drone attack that hit oil refineries, power plant facilities and electronics factories.
State media reported that a microelectronics factory stopped work after six Ukrainian drones damaged production and storage facilities in the Bryans region.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
