Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for direct peace talks with Ukraine to be held in Istanbul on May 15.
He said the negotiations should focus on ending the war and dealing with the reasons why it began.
Russian leader sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and started the most serious clash between Russia and the West since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
He said Russia proposed direct conversations with Ukraine in Istanbul in an attempt to ‘eliminate the fundamental causes of the conflict’ and ‘to achieve the restoration of a long -lasting, lasting peace.’
Putin accused Ukraine of going away from conversations in 2022, but said Moscow is now ready to resume discussions without any conditions.
“It was not Russia that interrupted the negotiations in 2022. It was Kyiv. Nevertheless, we suggest that Kyiv will resume direct negotiations without any prerequisites,” Putin said, referring to failed conversations shortly after the Russian invasion of 2022.
“We offer Kyiv authorities to resume negotiations already on Thursday in Istanbul,” Putin said.
“Our proposal is, as they say, on the table. The decision is now up to the Ukrainian authorities and their curators who are led, it seems, of their personal political ambitions and not by the interests of their people.”
Larger European powers threw their weight behind an unconditional 30-day Ukraine weapon rest on Saturday with the backing of US President Donald Trump and threatened Putin with ‘massive’ new sanctions if he did not accept within a few days.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peace champion, has repeatedly said he wants to end the ‘carnage’ from the Ukraine war, which his administration throws as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Former US President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine threw the invasion as an imperial style of land and has repeatedly promised to defeat Russian forces.
Putin throws the war as a waters moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by expanding NATO and interventions in what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
