Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video event on Wednesday. The Kremlin is downplaying the prospect of peace talks in Ukraine after President Biden said he would talk to Putin if “he’s looking to end the war.”
Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
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Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a video event on Wednesday. The Kremlin is downplaying the prospect of peace talks in Ukraine after President Biden said he would talk to Putin if “he’s looking to end the war.”
Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images
MOSCOW — The Kremlin rejected the idea of negotiating with President Biden to end the war in Ukraine on Friday, while defending continued attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure as “inevitable.” .
On Thursday, Biden said he would be willing to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin “if there is in fact any interest in him deciding that he is seeking to end the war.”
When asked about those comments at the White House, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin remains open to negotiations, as long as they help ensure Russia’s “national interests”.
But Peskov noted that Biden’s request for Putin to “withdraw from Ukraine” makes negotiations unlikely.
“The United States still does not recognize the new territories of the Russian Federation,” Peskov said, referring to the four regions of Ukraine that the Kremlin illegally annexed after receiving international condemnation in September. that complicates finding a basis for holding mutual discussions.”
The refusal to negotiate with Washington came as Putin made a strong defense for his actions in Ukraine during a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
According to one read the Kremlin Regarding the call, Putin said the West was pursuing “destructive” policies in Ukraine through financial and military support, which “led to the fact that Kiev rejected the idea of any talks judge.”
Putin defends weeks of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as a rational response to Ukraine’s attacks on Russia – including an important bridge connecting the Russian mainland with the annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Russian attacks in Ukraine leaving millions of Ukrainians without electricity, heat and running water when the cold weather is coming. Western nations joined Kyiv in accusing Moscow of trying to “winter weaponization” — an allegation that Putin has denied.
“It is noted that the Russian Armed Forces have long refrained from precision missile strikes against certain targets on Ukrainian territory,” the Kremlin reads Putin’s phone call with the Prime Minister. Germany said.
“But now such measures have become a mandatory and inevitable response to Kiev’s provocative attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure,” it wrote.
