Putin announced his desire to end the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible

Russia will do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine as quickly as possible, but Kyiv refuses to negotiate, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.

“I know your position on the conflict in Ukraine, your concerns that you constantly express. We will do everything to ensure that this all stops as soon as possible,” Putin stressed (quote according to TASS).

According to him, the leadership of Ukraine announced the rejection of the negotiation process, noting that Kyiv wants to achieve its goals by military means.

Since the beginning of the special operation, Russia and Ukraine have held negotiations several times. The first three face-to-face meetings took place in Belarus: on February 28, representatives of Russia and Ukraine met in the Gomel region, and then on March 3 and 6, negotiations continued in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. The fourth round of the Russian-Ukrainian dialogue took place on March 29 in Istanbul. But later the process was frozen. On May 17, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said that Ukraine had actually withdrawn from the negotiations.

In an earlier interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky on CNN, the Ukrainian president said he was not ready to negotiate with Russia, as Moscow would take advantage, in his opinion, of the pause to build up forces and further advance. Prior to this, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recalled Moscow’s readiness to start negotiations with Kyiv on what is happening in Ukraine. He stressed that without early negotiations, the process of concluding a treaty would become increasingly difficult.

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