In his remarks, Putin did not mention the ceasefire outlined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Ukrainian counterparts in Saudi Arabia this week.
Putin is expected to give a press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a key ally, later Thursday.
Rubio, meanwhile, may discuss the war when he meets with the top diplomats at the Group of Seven, or G-7, summit in Quebec, Canada on Thursday. That might be an awkward appointment for the secretary of state given President Donald Trump’s repeatedly saying he wants to take over Canada.
American and Russian officials have this week been talking behind the scenes. Trump has dispatched his envoy Steve Witkoff to Russia, while threatening sanctions for the Kremlin.
“I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
Despite this threat, Trump has asked few concessions from the Kremlin, while openly suggesting Ukraine will have to agree to many of Putin’s demands.
The White House said Witkoff would be in Russia this week but declined to say when. Russia’s state-run Tass news agency cited the Flightradar tracking website saying that Witkoff’s plane had crossed into Russian airspace Thursday morning.
On Thursday afternoon, Ushakov told Russian news outlet Izvestia that Putin and Witkoff will be having a closed door meeting later in the day.
Steve Witkoff speaking to the media outside the White House last week.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
The suggestion from talks in Saudi Arabia of an interim 30-day ceasefire has been welcomed by European leaders. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned them in his nightly address Wednesday about Russia’s history of breaking truces.
“The key is our partners’ ability to ensure that Russia is ready not to deceive, but to truly end the war,” he said.
Ukrainian officials and citizens say they want peace, but only alongside security guarantees that ensure the Kremlin does not attack again.
“I think 99% of Ukrainians wants the war to end in a fair way,” Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv oblast, told NBC News on Wednesday. “We want some guarantees that it will not come back in a couple of years.”
Here, in the southern city of Mykolaiv, some residents are deeply unimpressed by what they see as Trump’s attempts to force Ukraine into an unfavorable and risky settlement.
It’s like “a young child’s tricks,” said Yuriy, 46, a construction worker pushing his month-old baby in a stroller near the city’s memorial for dead soldiers. “My daughter is acting in her one-month life better than trump in his 70-plus years. She at least s—s in her diapers, and that guy s—s on the whole world.”
One country taking no chances is Poland, the former Eastern Bloc nation that raised defense spending to 4.7% this year and is among Russia’s most vocal critics.
Polish President Andrzej Duda told the Financial Times newspaper Thursday that he wanted the U.S. to redeploy American nuclear weapons from Western Europe to inside his country.
“There should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east,” he said. “For me, this is obvious.”
Richard Engel
NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent
Alexander Smith
Alexander Smith is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital based in London.
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