(Dec 19): President Vladimir Putin said he’s willing to discuss bringing Russia’s war in Ukraine to an end, even as he ruled out changes sought by Kyiv and Europe to a US peace plan drawn up with Moscow.
Putin said he had “practically agreed” on proposals for ending the war set out at summit talks with US President Donald Trump in Alaska in August.
“To say that we reject something is completely incorrect and has no basis in fact,” he said on Friday at his annual televised news conference in Moscow. “The issue is entirely on the side of our Western opponents, so to speak, primarily the leaders” of Ukraine and Europe, he said.
Putin spoke after intense negotiations in recent weeks involving the US, Ukraine and Europe over a 28-point peace plan that emerged last month following discussions between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev.
The US-Russia plan initially horrified Ukraine and its European allies by adopting a series of Kremlin demands that Kyiv had already flatly rejected. Some of the most contentious issues have been dropped or changed following interventions from Kyiv and Europe, and talks are continuing on the modified proposals amid rising optimism that they could form the basis of a peace deal.
Still, Putin hasn’t said if he’s willing to accept the plan in its current form. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are expected to meet separately with US officials for more talks in Florida at the weekend, including on plans for postwar security guarantees for Ukraine.
See also: Zelenskiy says will meet with Trump, Russia reaches out to US
Trump is “making serious efforts to end this conflict”, Putin said. “We would also very much like to live in peace and without any military conflicts next year.”
The Russian leader is refusing to roll back maximalist demands for territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, including parts of regions that Moscow’s forces have failed to occupy in more than a decade of fighting since 2014. Putin’s 2022 order to invade Ukraine triggered Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.
He has repeatedly rejected calls for a ceasefire to allow space for negotiations. Trump in October abandoned plans for a second summit in Budapest after the US concluded that Russia wasn’t ready to move from its war aims.
See also: Ukraine and US seek land compromise for peace deal with Putin
European Union leaders agreed in a late-night deal to loan Ukraine €90 billion for the next two years in a bid to strengthen Kyiv’s hand at the negotiating table and keep the war-torn country afloat. The loan will be funded from joint debt and backed by the bloc’s budget, a significant pivot from the bloc’s initial plan to use frozen Russian assets in Europe.
While it has defied predictions of collapse, Russia’s economy is straining under the impact of unprecedented sanctions imposed by the US and its Western allies in response to the invasion. It has depleted more than half of its rainy-day reserves as the budget deficit widens amid slowing growth and a slump in commodity revenues including from oil and gas.
Faced with a widening gap in the military budget, Russia’s government has resorted to increasingly costly borrowing to help fund the war. It has issued 7.9 trillion roubles of debt known as OFZ so far this year, sharply surpassing the previous record set in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is the third time that Putin has held his news conference since he began the invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin cancelled the event in late 2022 as Russia’s army suffered a series of reverses on the battlefield in Ukraine.
He began the tradition of a marathon annual news conference early in his 26-year rule. Over the years, it has evolved into an event carefully stage-managed by the Kremlin to show Putin resolving local social and economic issues raised by ordinary Russians frustrated at a lack of action by regional officials.
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