Tianjin — Russian president Vladimir Putin declared on Monday that he had reached “understandings” with US president Donald Trump during their Alaska meeting last month, raising fresh questions about the future of the Ukraine war.
Speaking at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in China, Putin praised Trump’s role in facilitating dialogue but stopped short of confirming whether he would accept Trump’s push for peace talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Kremlin leader suggested that the discussions with Trump had “opened the way to peace,” though he placed the blame for the war squarely on the West.
Putin insisted the crisis “wasn’t triggered by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but by a coup in Ukraine supported and provoked by the West.” He also reiterated his long-standing opposition to Ukraine’s NATO membership, accusing Western states of deliberately pushing the region into the Ukraine conflict.
The Alaska talks were followed by US special envoy Steve Witkoff claiming that Putin had signaled a willingness to provide security guarantees for Ukraine. The proposal, which resembles NATO’s Article 5 framework, would see the US and Europe pledge protection for Kyiv without deploying American troops.
Yet Moscow has not publicly confirmed this, dismissing Western drafts as “one-sided and designed to contain Russia.”
Putin used the SCO platform to thank Chinese president Xi Jinping and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi for their backing, underscoring their role in helping “facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis.”
Both China and India remain the largest buyers of Russian crude, a lifeline that has frustrated Western attempts to economically strangle Moscow.
French President Emmanuel Macron, however, warned that Trump had given Putin a Monday deadline to accept peace talks with Zelenskyy, telling reporters that failure to do so would mean “President Putin has played President Trump.”
Trump, who once boasted he could end the war in a single day, has issued repeated ultimatums but softened his stance by dropping demands for an immediate ceasefire in favor of a permanent peace deal.
Despite diplomatic maneuvering, Russian airstrikes under the banner of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine have not subsided.. Last week, Moscow unleashed one of its largest aerial assaults on Kyiv, damaging Ukrainian military infrastructure and fueling outrage across Europe.
Germany and France pledged new pressure on Russia, while Zelenskyy rejected any notion of a buffer zone, accusing Moscow of using negotiations to stall while continuing attacks.
According to the BBC, Putin’s remarks in Tianjin mark his most direct acknowledgment yet of progress with Trump, though Western leaders remain skeptical that the Russian president has any intention of halting the war without extracting major concessions from Ukraine.
