Kremlin says Putin ready for talks with Trump
MOSCOW
The Kremlin said on Jan. 10 that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks with Donald Trump, after the incoming U.S. president said a meeting between the pair was being set up.
"The president has repeatedly stated his openness to contact with international leaders, including the U.S. president, including Donald Trump," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Trump, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, has repeatedly said he can bring a swift end to the nearly three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine, without presenting a concrete plan.
On Jan. 9 he said a meeting with Putin was being arranged.
"He wants to meet, and we're setting it up," Trump said at a meeting with Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
"President Putin wants to meet, he's said that even publicly, and we have to get that war over with, that's a bloody mess," he said.
The Kremlin welcomed Trump's "readiness to solve problems through dialogue," Peskov said on Jan. 10, adding Moscow had no prerequisites for staging the meeting.
"No conditions are required. What is required is mutual desire and political will to solve problems through dialogue," he told reporters in a daily briefing.
Trump's hopes for a swift end to the conflict have stoked concern in Kiev that Ukraine could be forced to accept a peace deal on terms favorable to Moscow.
Washington has delivered tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale military offensive in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that without such support his country would have lost the conflict.
He is pushing Trump to back his "peace-through-strength" proposal, seeking NATO protections and concrete Western security guarantees as part of any settlement to end the fighting.
