Russia takes the comments made by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump that he could find a way to end the war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
“The fact that Mr. Trump as a presidential candidate is saying that he is ready and wants to stop the war in Ukraine, we take that quite seriously,” Putin said at a news conference in Astana.
Russia usually refers to its military offensive on Ukraine as a “special military operation.”
Putin added that he was “not familiar” with Trump’s specific proposals to end the fighting, now in its third year.
“That, of course, is the key question,” Putin said.
“But I have no doubt that he says it sincerely, and we support it,” he added.
Putin has always claimed to be open to talks on ending the conflict, though last month demanded Ukraine effectively capitulate as a precondition of a cease-fire.
The Kremlin leader had called for Ukraine to pull its troops out of the south and east of the country, vacating territory currently held by its forces, if it wanted Russia’s offensive to end.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected the idea of a temporary ceasefire, which he says Russia would use to regroup and rearm.
Kyiv wants Russian forces out of the country entirely, including the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014, as part of any settlement, and for Russia to pay compensation for damage and destruction caused by the conflict.
Russian troops have made modest advances on the battlefield this year after a Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023 was largely unsuccessful.
Constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington is impossible during a heated U.S. presidential election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
Putin said Russia would wait for the U.S. election result in November and see what the new leadership does.
