Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end, remarks that came just hours after he had vowed victory in Ukraine at Moscow’s most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years.
“I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War.
He also said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Kremlin has said peace talks brokered by US President Donald Trump’s administration were on pause. Putin has repeatedly vowed to fight on until all of Russia’s various war aims are achieved in what Moscow calls the ‘special military operation’.
Putin was speaking in the Kremlin after setting out his view of the causes of the war. He blamed ‘globalist’ Western leaders, saying they promised Nato would not expand eastward after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, but then tried to draw Ukraine into the European Union’s orbit.
After Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating unilateral ceasefires they had each declared over recent days, US President Donald Trump announced a three-day ceasefire from yesterday to tomorrow that was supported by the Kremlin and Kyiv. The two sides also agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners.
“I’d like to see it stop. Russia-Ukraine – it’s the worst thing since the Second World War in terms of life. Twenty-five thousand young soldiers every month. It’s crazy,” Trump told reporters in Washington.
He added that he would ‘like to see a big extension’ of the ceasefire. There were no reports of violations of the ceasefire from either Moscow or Kyiv.
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