Russian President Vladimir Putin says there is “light at the end of the tunnel” in Russia-United States relations, while US President Donald Trump renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Moscow if there is no progress towards a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks.
The Russian president, answering questions during a visit to a nuclear research centre on Friday, said he was sure Trump’s leadership qualities would help in restoring relations from recent lows.
“With the arrival of President Trump, I think that a light at the end of the tunnel has finally loomed. And now we had a very good, meaningful and frank meeting in Alaska,” Putin said, referring to last week’s summit.
“The next steps now depend on the leadership of the United States, but I am confident that the leadership qualities of the current president, President Trump, are a good guarantee that relations will be restored.”
Putin also said the two countries were discussing joint projects in the Arctic, but he did not give many details. He only said there were “huge, huge” mineral reserves in the region and noted that Russian liquefied natural gas company Novatek was already operating there.
‘A very important decision’
Both Russia and the US have said they see enormous economic opportunities if they can normalise relations after ties plunged to a post-Cold War low because of the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, however, Trump said he was unhappy about a Russian strike on an American factory in Ukraine this week, which caused a fire that injured some of the facility’s employees.
“I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
He also expressed frustration towards Moscow since there had been no progress in reaching a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks, despite his meeting about the war with Putin in Alaska.
“I’m going to make a decision as to what we do and it’s going to be, it’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight,” Trump said.
Trump added that he had begun making arrangements for a meeting between Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday, soon after concluding White House talks with the Ukrainian president and European leaders and after speaking to Putin by phone.
‘No agenda’ for Putin-Zelenskyy meeting
Earlier on Friday, however, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there was no agenda for a potential summit between Putin and Zelenskyy and that there is no plan for such a meeting.
Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker”, Lavrov said that Putin had made clear he was ready to meet Zelenskyy to discuss a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine, provided there was a proper agenda for such a session, something he said was lacking for now.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told NBC, saying no meeting was therefore planned for now.
Lavrov said Russia had agreed to show flexibility on a number of issues raised by Trump at a US-Russia summit last week, but accused Ukraine of not showing the same flexibility in talks with Trump and European allies that followed in Washington.
“He [Trump] clearly indicated – it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership [for Ukraine], including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything,” said Lavrov.
“He even said no to, as I said, to cancelling legislation banning the Russian language. How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”
‘Moscow wants eastern Donbas’
Trump had imposed an August 8 deadline for Putin to agree to an end to the war or face new sanctions against Russia and countries that buy its oil, but instead agreed to meet the Kremlin leader at a summit in Alaska last Friday.
Since then, Russia has shown little movement, maintaining most of its longstanding demands while proposing to freeze the front line in two Ukrainian regions it claims as its own, and expressing a readiness to potentially hand back relatively small pieces of Ukrainian territory it controls.
Putin wants Ukraine to give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told the Reuters news agency.
Zelenskyy, who has said he does not want to “gift” Russia any territory, said on Friday the Kremlin was doing everything it could to make sure that a meeting between him and Putin did not take place. He called on Ukraine’s allies to apply new sanctions on Moscow if it showed no desire to end the war.