Kremlin says Putin is open to Ukraine peace but warns against rushing a deal
Item
1 of 2 A rescuer works at a site of a Russian drone strike, amid
Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Dnipro, Ukraine in this handout picture
released April 30, 2025. Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military
Civil Administration Serhiy Lysak via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS
[1/2]A
rescuer works at a site of a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack
on Ukraine, in Dnipro, Ukraine in this handout picture released April
30, 2025. Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Civil
Administration Serhiy Lysak via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights - Kremlin says issues too complex for fast deal
- U.S. says concrete proposals now needed
- Trump says Putin wants peace
- Ukraine says ready for talks
MOSCOW,
April 30 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin is open to peace in
Ukraine and intense work is going on with the United States, but the
conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress that Washington wants
is difficult to achieve, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump,
who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said
he wants to end the "bloodbath" of the more than three-year
war in Ukraine.
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But
Washington has been signalling that it is frustrated by the failure of
Moscow and Kyiv to reach terms to end the deadliest land war in Europe
since World War Two.
"The
(Russian) president remains open to political and diplomatic methods of
resolving this conflict," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told
reporters.
He noted that Putin had expressed a willingness for direct talks with Ukraine, but that there had been no answer yet from Kyiv.
After
the Kremlin's remark, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said
Ukraine was ready for peace talks in any format if Moscow signed up to
an unconditional ceasefire.
Putin
has previously welcomed the idea in principle, but said that many
issues need to be worked out in practice before such a ceasefire can be
agreed.
The
Kremlin said on Wednesday that Russia's aims had to be achieved either
way, saying Moscow's preference was to achieve its aims peacefully.
"We
understand that Washington is willing to achieve a quick success in
this process," Peskov said in English. But news agency TASS quoted
Peskov as saying that the root causes of the Ukraine war were too
complex to be resolved in one day.
Putin's
decision to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022
triggered the worst confrontation between Moscow and the West since the
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Former
U.S. President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the
invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat
Russian forces.
Putin
casts the war as a watershed moment in Moscow's relations with the
West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in
1991 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow's
sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
MORE WAR?
Putin in March said that
Russia supported
a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that
fighting could not be paused until a number of crucial conditions were
worked out or clarified.
On Monday, Putin declared a
three-day ceasefire in May to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union over the Nazis in World War Two.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy has said that progress in resolving the war depended on Russia taking the first step of agreeing to an unconditional ceasefire.
Trump said on Tuesday he thought that Putin
wants to stop the war in Ukraine, adding that if it was not for Trump Russia would try to take the whole of Ukraine.
"If it weren't for me, I think he'd want to take over the whole country," Trump said.
U.S.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that now was the time
for concrete proposals from Moscow and Kyiv to end the war and warned
that the U.S. will step back as a mediator if there is no progress.
Trump
refused to answer a question about whether the United States would halt
military aid to Ukraine if Washington walked away from talks.
Reporting
by Reuters in Moscow and Kyiv; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Maxim
Rodionov; editing by Andrew Osborn and Sharon Singleton