Putin ready for ‘serious’ peace talks

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Russian officials claim they have battlefield momentum in Ukraine, even though their slow progress has been costly in terms of casualties and destroyed vehicles.

The Institute for the Study of War cast doubt on Russian claims that its invasion was unstoppable as it is still struggling to capture cities in the eastern Donetsk region.

“Data on Russian forces’ rate of advance indicates that a Russian military victory in Ukraine is not inevitable, and a rapid Russian seizure of the rest of Donetsk oblast [region] is not imminent,” the Washington-based think tank said on Wednesday. “Recent Russian advances elsewhere on the front line have largely been opportunistic and exploited seasonal weather conditions.”

Mark Rutte, secretary-general of Nato, praised President Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, which is the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

“There is tremendous renewed energy around the peace process, and for that I want to commend US President Trump,” Rutte told reporters during a visit to Iceland where he met the prime minister, Kristrun Frostadottir.

Rutte has become known as the Trump “whisperer” for his ability to smooth over tensions between the US president and allies. At a key Nato summit in the Netherlands in June on defence spending Rutte referred to Trump as “daddy”.

President Putin claimed that he was hopeful for agreement with Kyiv one day, but it was “pointless” under the present leadership.

“I hope that in the future we can reach an agreement with Ukraine,” he told a press conference in Kyrgyzstan. “There are quite a lot of healthy-minded people there today who want to build long-term, historical relations with Moscow.”

However, the Ukrainian leadership had “made a strategic mistake” and lost its legitimacy when it refused to hold elections, he added.

President Zelensky, whose term was due to end in May last year, has said elections cannot be held in wartime while the country is under martial law.

Viktor Orban, President Putin’s closest European ally, is expected to arrive in Moscow on Friday for talks that will strain European unity and anger other countries in central Europe.

The Hungarian prime minister, who has accused other European countries of drawing up “war plans” against Russia, will hail President Trump and dismiss claims by Poland, the Baltic States and other eastern Europeans that Moscow is a security threat.

“Europeans must immediately and unconditionally support the peace initiative of the President of the United States,” he wrote in a letter to the European Commission at the weekend. “In addition to supporting the US president, we must, without delay, launch autonomous and direct diplomatic negotiations with Russia.”

President Putin warned that European plans to confiscate frozen Russian assets would be “theft” and would damage the global financial system.

EU leaders meet next month to discuss transferring Russian central bank assets, immobilised under sanctions after the full-scale invasion in 2022, to a special “reparations loan” fund for Ukraine.

Talks hung on Belgium lifting a veto to effectively confiscate Russian state funds worth €185 billion that are held on the country’s territory at the Euroclear securities house.

In a letter to the European Commission, first reported by the Financial Times, Valérie Urbain, the clearing house’s chief executive, warned that taking the cash would lead to higher borrowing costs for European countries as markets charge a “risk premium”.

President Putin said that he found it difficult to imagine how Russia would rejoin the G7 group of nations to make it the G8 again.

Allowing Russia back in to the group of leading economies was among the proposals in the leaked American peace plan for Ukraine.

“Can you imagine it yourself?” Putin said at a press conference in Kyrgyzstan. “Like, we arrive, say ‘Hello’ and then what? Frown and look at one another?”

Moscow had not asked to rejoin the group, Putin added, but would be interested in greater co-operation with other nations. Russia was removed from the G8 in 2014 after it annexed Crimea and has been an international pariah since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Putin told journalists in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek to “pay attention: even before the beginning of the tragic events in Ukraine I stopped travelling. Because when the events in Ukraine started, they said we’re not waiting for you [to visit]. And thank God for that.”

Even after a peace agreement, Ukraine will need strong armed forces and security guarantees and no territorial concessions should be forced on the country, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said.

“We view the efforts of the US government to find a solution here very positively. However, we also say that the security interests of Europeans and also the security interests of Ukraine must be safeguarded,” Merz said at a press conference with the Estonian prime minister, Kristen Michal.

Ukrainian and American officials will continue work on a US-backed peace plan, President Zelensky’s chief of staff said.

“At the end of this week, the joint work of the Ukrainian and American delegations will continue to develop the result achieved in Geneva,” Andriy Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app, referring to talks last week in Switzerland.

“It is important not to lose productivity and to work quickly,” he added.

Zelensky said this week that he hoped to travel to the US to discuss the negotiations personally with President Trump.

President Putin said that recognition of occupied Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area as Russian would be a “key moment” in talks with the United States.

“That must be a subject of our talks with the American side. Thank you for paying attention to that. It’s one of the key moments,” Putin said at a press conference in Kyrgyzstan. He was responding to a question about the future status of the regions, and whether Washington might recognise them as de facto Russian (the situation in practice), rather than de jure (a situation officially recognised by law).

The 28-point draft plan for peace in Ukraine leaked this month proposed that “Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the United States”. Luhansk and Donetsk are the regions making up Donbas.

Kyiv might accept recognition of de facto Russian control as it would not impinge on Ukraine’s constitution, which says its borders are “indivisible and inviolable”.

Russia’s president said that his country was “not planning to attack Europe” and dismissed the notion as funny.

He did suggest that he was willing to put such as commitment in writing. President Putin told a press conference in Kyrgyzstan: “It’s one thing to say that Russia is not planning to attack Europe. For us that sounds funny, of course, we never intended such a thing, but if they want to hear that from us, well then, let’s record it [in an agreement], no problem.”

In an apparent reference to France reintroducing a limited form of military service in response to growing fears of a confrontation with Russia, he added: “There are people there [in Europe], it seems to me, who have slightly lost it, when they, or some rascals who want something for that, say publicly to their populations that Russia is preparing an attack on Europe and we need to immediately strengthen our armed forces.”

President Putin said at a press conference in Kyrgyzstan that there were “no final versions” of an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, but rather a series of questions to address.

“It would be impolite on my part to to speak now about some kind of final versions,” he said. “Because there aren’t any.”

He added that negotiations should proceed in “diplomatic language”.

President Putin has said he was “surprised” by American sanctions against Russian oil companies.

Last month the US imposed its toughest sanctions yet on the Russian energy sector, targeting the oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft.

Putin said that sanctions were destroying Russian relations with the US, adding that the Russian government was developing a package of retaliatory measures in case of “confiscation of Russian assets in Europe”, a reference to the European Union’s attempts to use some assets frozen under sanctions to support the Ukrainian war effort.

President Putin has rejected the suggestion that the American envoy Steve Witkoff had shown himself to be biased towards Moscow in peace talks over Ukraine, describing the claim as nonsense.

Witkoff is expected to visit Moscow next week to meet Putin, but he attracted more criticism in Europe and the US this week after appearing in a leaked recording of a phone call to have advised the Kremlin on how to approach peace negotiations.

Putin told reporters it would have been surprising if Witkoff had thrown obscenities at Russia during the conversation. “This is nonsense,” he said, describing Witkoff as an American citizen who had defended the interests of his country.

President Putin has said Russia will end its offensive in Ukraine if Kyiv withdraws from territory that Russia claims as its own — but will otherwise take it by force.

“If Ukrainian forces leave the territories they hold, then we will stop combat operations,” Putin said. “If they don’t, then we will achieve it by military means.”

President Putin has said Russia agrees that the US-backed plan can be used as a basis for future agreements, but added that European security needed discussion.

Asked whether he knew who would represent the US at talks in Moscow next week, he said: “It’s clearly up to the president of the United States, we are waiting for them next week.”

President Putin is speaking more than a week after President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff drafted a 28-point peace plan that initially alarmed Kyiv and many European allies due to perceived concessions to Moscow.

The plan was later reduced to 19 points after counter-proposals from European states and Ukraine were taken into account.

The Russian position on the latest proposals remains unclear and the Kremlin has appeared to move little from its earlier goals.

Russia is ready for “serious” talks regarding peace in Ukraine, President Putin has said.

The Russian president was speaking at a security summit in Kyrgyzstan.

He said he did not have any aggressive plans towards Europe and called such a suggestion “ridiculous”.