Vladimir Putin<\/a> said that he intended to scale back military expenditure and also indicated he was ready for a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine.<\/p>\nThe Russian president said his country was ready to reduce the military budget in the long term, owing to budgetary pressures and the increased defence spending having fuelled inflation.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday, he alluded to a new round of peace negotiations with Ukraine, potentially in Istanbul, although the time and venue had yet to be agreed.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged that the peace proposals from Russia and Ukraine \u201care two absolutely contradictory memorandums\u201d, but added, \u201cThat\u2019s why negotiations are being organised and conducted, in order to find a path to bringing them closer together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin added that the two sides\u2019 negotiators were in constant contact and that Russia was ready to return the bodies of 3,000 more Ukrainian soldiers.<\/p>\n
He also said relations between Russia and the United States were beginning to stabilise, attributing the improvement to efforts by US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn general, thanks to President Trump, relations between Russia and the United States are beginning to level out in some ways,\u201d said Putin.<\/p>\n
Trump on Friday suggested progress may be on the horizon regarding Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on that one,\u201d Trump told reporters at the White House. \u201cPresident Putin called up and he said, I\u2019d love to help you with Iran. I said, do me a favour: I\u2019ll handle Iran. Help me with Russia. We got to get that one settled. And I think something\u2019s going to happen there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian leader indicates longterm plan to cut military spending, as his forces vie for foothold in Ukraine\u2019s Dnipropetrovsk.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[6178,299,12,332,7661,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-219415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine","14":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114757050272470453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}