Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he was ready for talks with US counterpart Donald Trump on the Ukraine conflict, fuelling expectations of contact between the two world leaders.
Putin told a reporter from Russian state TV “As for the issue of negotiations… we have always said, and I want to emphasise this once again, that we are ready for these negotiations on Ukrainian issues.”
Putin added that the 2022 “crisis in Ukraine” — a reference to Moscow’s full-scale military offensive — might have been averted had Donald Trump been US president at the time.
“I cannot but agree with him that if he had been president — if his victory hadn’t been stolen in 2020 — then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that emerged in 2022,” Putin told a state TV reporter.
