Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he was ready for talks with Kyiv, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Ukraine’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing.
Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into the southwestern Kursk region in early August, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing dozens of towns and villages. Following the attack, Putin said there could be no talk of negotiations with Kyiv.
Speaking at at the Eastern Economic Forum in the city of Vladivostok, Putin said Moscow was ready for talks but on the basis of an aborted deal between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reached in Istanbul in 2022, the terms of which were never made public.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so, but not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of those documents that were agreed and actually signed in Istanbul,” Putin said.
The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of a deal in the spring of 2022, shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.
“We managed to reach an agreement, that is the whole point,” Putin said Thursday. “The signature of the head of the Ukrainian delegation who supported this document testifies to this, which means that the Ukrainian side was generally satisfied with the agreements reached.”
“It did not come into force only because they were given a command not to do so, because the elites of the United States, Europe [and] some European countries wanted to achieve a strategic defeat of Russia,” the Russian leader claimed.
