President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would like to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin “immediately” to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war.
Putin responded on Friday that the Ukraine war might have been avoided if the 2020 U.S. presidential election had not been “stolen” from Trump.
“From what I hear, Putin would like to see me, and we’ll leave as soon as we can. I’d meet immediately,” Trump said from the White House on Thursday after delivering a feisty video address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
“Everyday we don’t meet, soldiers are being killed on the battlefield,” he said.
In his speech to the WEF, Trump called on the Saudi-led OPEC cartel to reduce the cost of oil, cutting off Russia’s income so it could no longer afford to continue the war.
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” he predicted.
“They should have done it long ago. They’re very responsible, actually, to a certain extent, for what’s taking place. Millions of lives are being lost,” he said.
Trump used his preferred social media platform, Truth Social, later on Thursday to urge Putin to “stop this ridiculous war.”
“IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a ‘deal’, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump wrote, making liberal use of capital letters for emphasis, as is his custom.
“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL,’” he added.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Putin is ready for a telephone conference with Trump.
“Putin is ready. We are waiting for signals. Everyone is ready. It is difficult to read the coffee grounds here. As soon as there is something, if there is something, we will inform you,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. This was not a malapropism about reading tea leaves. Reading coffee grounds to predict the future is an art form in Turkey.
Peskov said Russia is prepared to discuss arms control with Trump, in addition to the war in Ukraine, and would like to cooperate with the new American administration on denuclearization. Russia withdrew from its last arms control agreement with the United States, the New START Treaty, in 2023.
“We are interested in starting this negotiation process as soon as possible. The ball is in the Americans’ court, who have stopped all substantive contacts,” said Peskov.
The Kremlin, however, rejected Trump’s assertion that lower oil prices could bring Russia to the negotiating table.
“This conflict does not depend on oil prices,” Peskov said.
The price of Russian oil is currently spiking due to U.S. sanctions, which have raised the shipping fees for Russian crude by almost 500% since the beginning of January. Russia’s biggest oil customer, China, has reportedly grown nervous about taking deliveries from sanctioned tanker ships. The Russians are attempting to solve this problem by rotating other ships that have not been named in U.S. sanctions to deliver oil to Chinese ports.
On Friday morning, Putin gave a press conference in which he said he might not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump had been re-elected in 2020. Putin said Trump lost that election because his opponent, Joe Biden, cheated.
“I cannot but agree with him that if he had been president, if his victory had not been stolen from him in 2020, then perhaps there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022,” Putin said.
Putin praised Trump as “smart” and “pragmatic” and predicted he would do a better job of managing the U.S. economy than Biden. He said he was prepared to talk with Trump about the Ukraine crisis as soon as possible.
“We have always said, and I want to emphasise this once again, that we are ready for these negotiations on Ukrainian issues,” he said.
At roughly the same time, Putin’s Foreign Ministry issued a belligerent statement that blamed Western countries for prolonging the war by supplying weapons to the “illegitimate Kyiv regime.”
“Despite the increasingly loud talk about the need for peace talks, no practical actions indicating a real readiness for them on the part of Kyiv and the West are objectively observed. The issue of the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government is not being resolved,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The head of that ministry, Sergei Lavrov, was somewhat more accommodating after Putin signaled his readiness to speak with Trump. Lavrov said such a dialog can begin if the U.S. government “takes into account Russia’s interests.”
Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was cool to the notion of Trump and Putin holding bilateral talks about the war.
“Putin is trying to push the idea of negotiations with the United States. But he has one condition: he wants to decide Europe’s fate – without Europe. And he seeks to talk about Ukraine – without Ukraine. This will not happen,” Yermak said.