Cnn
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Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Thursday in Istanbul, while European leaders and the United States are trying to push Moscow to accept a 30-day ceasefire.
“We would like to start immediately, already on Thursday May 15 in Istanbul, where they were detained before and where they were interrupted,” said Putin in a rare television address at the end of the evening. He stressed that talks should be held “without any prerequisite”.
“We are set up for serious negotiations with Ukraine,” said Putin, adding that they are intended to “eliminate the deep causes of the conflict” and “reach the creation of a long -term and lasting peace”.
The proposal occurred a few hours after the leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland were held alongside the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in kyiv and urged Putin to accept a cease-fire of 30 days from Monday or to face possible “massive sanctions”, according to French President Emmanuel Macron.
The request comes with the support of the White House after a joint telephone call with American President Donald Trump, Europeans said.
Shortly after the leaders called for a ceasefire, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was “resistant to all kinds of pressure”.
“Europe actually confronts us very openly,” said Peskov, adding that Putin supports the idea of a ceasefire “in general”, but “there are a lot of questions” on the recent proposal that still requires answering. He did not develop these questions.
Ukraine and Russia have not had direct talks since the first weeks of the invasion of Moscow in 2022. Putin said on Sunday that he would speak with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of conference holding with kyiv.
For two months now, Ukraine has said that it wanted an immediate 30-day cease-fire-a position promoted by the main European allies of kyiv, as well as by Trump.
Russia has so far refused to commit, saying that it supports the idea of a 30 -day break in principle, but insists that there is what it calls “nuances” which must first address.
Putin denied Sunday, Putin denied that Moscow refused dialogue with kyiv and said that “the decision now lies in the Ukrainian authorities”.
“We do not exclude that during these talks, there will be a possibility of organizing a sort of new truce, a new ceasefire,” he said.
He described the talks proposed “a first step towards a long -lasting stable peace, but not a prologue to the continuation of an armed conflict after rearmament and rebalance the Ukrainian armed forces and the feverish excavation of the trenches in the new bastions.”
Putin has often talked about the need to respond to what he calls “deep causes” – which mean, among other things, the expansion towards the east of NATO.
In a social article of truth on Thursday, Trump wrote that “if the ceasefire is not respected, the United States and its partners will impose new sanctions”, adding to its sense frustrated by the Russian dropout.
Trump put an end to the war in Ukraine one of his priorities and he has invested a lot of effort to try to involve Putin. His special envoy Steve Witkoff went to Russia four times to meet Putin and there have been several other high -level meetings between us and Russian officials since Trump returned to the White House in January.
But despite the previously unthinkable concessions to Russia, the Trump administration was unable to bring Russia to accept the limited proposal for the ceasefire, provided for a way to a permanent truce.
Last month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened that the United States would move away from talks if there is no progress. Instead, the United States is now joining the other Western allies in Ukraine trying to put more pressure on Russia.
Peskov told CNN on Saturday that Russia was “very grateful” for Washington’s mediation efforts, but added that “at the same time, it is quite useless to try to rely on us”.
This story has been updated with additional information.
