Speaking at the Kremlin in the early hours of Sunday, Putin proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15 -- hours after Kyiv and the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Poland had called for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire to start on Monday.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held direct talks in Istanbul in the first weeks of the conflict, but failed to agree to halt the fighting, which has been raging ever since.
Putin said he was “committed to serious negotiations with Ukraine” and that he wanted talks to “eliminate the root causes of the conflict and to establish a long-lasting peace”.
‘Anti-Russian rhetoric’
But he also accused Ukraine’s Western backers of wanting to “continue war with Russia” and -- without mentioning the specific Ukraine-European proposal for a 30-day ceasefire -- slammed European “ultimatums” and “anti-Russian rhetoric”.
He vowed to “continue to work with both sides to make sure that it happens”.
“An unconditional ceasefire is not preceded by negotiations, by definition,“ he told reporters as he stepped off a train in the Polish city of Przemysl on his return from Ukraine.
The United States and other countries back the proposal, they said.
The leaders also held a video conference with their counterparts from about 20 other member countries of the “coalition of the willing” supporting Ukraine.
The United States and Ukraine have for weeks pushed a similar proposal, which Russia has not accepted.
Kyiv and its allies had feared that Trump was pivoting towards Moscow because he had clashed with Zelensky. But Trump has recently expressed growing impatience with Putin.
The UK’s Starmer said the Kyiv talks had led to “absolute unity across a whole range of countries around the world, including the United States, that there must be that 30-day unconditional ceasefire”.
“For the first time in a long time we had a feeling that the whole free world is truly united,“ Poland’s Tusk said.
Macron said the ceasefire would be “mainly” monitored by the United States but that “Europeans will contribute”.
Putin had ordered a unilateral three-day truce from Thursday through to Saturday for the event. But a Ukrainian army brigade operating in the east told AFP the intensity of fighting had remained “pretty much the same”.
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