Russia Will Not ‘Give Up’ On Its Aims In Ukraine, Putin Asserts In Call With Trump

<p data-pm-slice=”0 0 []”>Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump on Thursday that Moscow wants a negotiated end to the Ukraine war but will not step back from its original goals, reports news agency Reuters, quoting the Kremlin. In a wide-ranging conversation during a phone call that also covered Iran and the Middle East, Trump “again raised the issue of an early end to military action” in Ukraine, the aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters.</p>
<p class=”emotion-k3zb6l-Paragraph e1e4oisd0″ data-type=”paragraph”>”Our president said that Russia will achieve the aims it set, that is to say the root causes that led to the current state of affairs,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters. “Russia will not give up on these aims.”</p>
<p>Putin briefed the US President on the implementation of agreements reached between Russia and Ukraine last month to exchange prisoners of war and dead soldiers, Ushakov said, and also told him that Moscow was ready to continue negotiations with Kyiv.</p>
<p>According to the report, there was nothing in the Kremlin readout that suggested that Putin had made any shift in Moscow’s position during the conversation with the US president.</p>
<p>Ushakov said that both Putin and Trump did not talk about the US decision to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine.</p>
<p>On Iran, he said, “the Russian side emphasised the importance of resolving all disputes, disagreements and conflict situations exclusively by political and diplomatic means”.</p>
<p>In June, Trump sent US military bombers to strike three Iranian nuclear sites, in a move condemned by Moscow as unprovoked and illegal.</p>