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Putin's reported proposal for bilateral talks with Ukraine gains wide attention

Global Times

By Xu Keyue Published: Apr 22, 2025 10:41 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Monday bilateral talks with Ukraine for the first time since the early days of the conflict, Reuters reported.

Putin said Moscow was open to any peace initiatives and expects the same from Kiev. While Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky did not respond directly to Putin's proposal, he emphasized in his nightly video address that Ukraine "was ready for any conversation" about a cease-fire that would stop strikes on civilians, the Reuters report said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Kiev must take certain legal steps to "clear the obstacles" for the start of dialogue with Moscow, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

The US has indicated to walk away from its own peace deal efforts unless some progress is achieved, according to media report.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that if either side continues to block the cease-fire process, the US will step away from facilitating a peace deal, according to a Politico report on Friday.

"Putin is making a positive gesture while sending a clear signal that Russia does not pin its entire hopes on the US to facilitate peace talks," Cui Hongjian, a professor of the Academy of Regional and Global Governance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Direct talks between Russia and Ukraine are necessary, but at the moment, some key conditions are still missing, Cui said.

Both countries are coming under increasing pressure from President Donald Trump's administration to bring an end to the conflict. Trump, who will mark 100 days in office next week, promised to end the war on his first day, according to NBC.

Russia at the weekend declared a brief Easter truce - which both sides accused each other of violating, according to CNN on Tuesday.

Ukraine will take part in talks with the US and European countries on Wednesday in London. The discussions are a follow-up to a Paris meeting last week where the US and European states discussed ways to end the more than three-year-old conflict, Reuters reported.

Cui believed that the broader context of the recent meetings from Paris to London is that the US is now seeking to adjust its tactic as previous rounds of US-led negotiations yielded unsatisfactory results.

US President Donald Trump's plan to settle the Ukrainian conflict may include the deployment of European troops on the Kiev-controlled territories, The New York Post reported, citing a US official, according to TASS.

In addition, The New York Post said that negotiators are now considering "a separate peacekeeping force to monitor any ceasefire, which would look like a 'joint commission' of Russians, Ukrainians and a third, non-NATO country watching the frontlines to ensure both sides are putting their weapons down," TASS reported.