The US and Russia made no tangible progress towards a truce over the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine following talks in Moscow, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was “ready” for war with Europe.
The five hours of negotiations involving US President Donald Trump’s envoy and his son-in-law did not result in a compromise, a Putin aide said, largely meeting analysts’ expectations that Russia was unlikely to waver from expansive territorial ambitions in Ukraine.
And rather than turning down the temperature, Putin said ahead of the meeting that Moscow was prepared to fight European powers, whom he said were “on the side of war”; the EU shortly afterwards said it had agreed to ban Russian gas imports within two years.