President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska last month could help pave the way toward peace in Ukraine.
“We highly value the efforts of China, India and our other strategic partners aimed at helping to resolve the crisis in Ukraine,” Putin told a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China.
“I would also note that the understandings reached at the recent Russian-American summit in Alaska, I hope, are moving in the same direction, opening the path toward peace in Ukraine,” he added.
Putin said that “work is already underway” to implement those “understandings,” though no agreements between Russia and the United States have been made public.
He also said he had already briefed Chinese President Xi Jinping on last month’s meeting with Trump and planned to share more details with the other 23 leaders attending the summit in Tianjin.
Trump had suggested that Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of reaching a major peace agreement after the Aug. 15 summit in Alaska and subsequent multilateral talks at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders.
In the weeks since, however, that optimism has largely evaporated. Negotiations have not moved forward, with the last direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegates taking place in Istanbul in June. Both sides remain entrenched in their positions, as Moscow continues to demand territorial concessions that Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out.
At the same time, an anticipated face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelensky, which Western officials suggested could happen by the end of August, never materialized.
At the SCO summit in Tianjin, Putin defended his decision to invade Ukraine in 2022, blaming the West for Ukraine’s 2014 pro-EU uprising and for “constant attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO.”
“In this regard, we highly value the efforts and proposals of China, India and our other strategic partners, aimed at contributing to resolving the Ukrainian crisis,” the Russian president said.
The SCO is composed of China, India, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. Sixteen other countries are affiliated as observers or “dialogue partners.”
AFP contributed reporting.
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