o Biden has said he is willing to talk to Vladimir Putin if the Russian leader expresses interest in ending the war in Ukraine.
After a three-hour bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and their respective advisers, the US president said he would meet the Russian leader “if he is willing to talk to find out what he is willing to do”.
Biden said any talks with Putin would depend on the support of NATO allies, while Macron made it clear they would never urge Ukraine to make a compromise it deemed unacceptable.
White House State Dinner in Washington | December 1, 2022
“I am willing to talk to Mr. Putin if indeed he has an interest in deciding that he is looking for a way to end the war,” Biden said. “He hasn’t done that yet.”
Expressing Mr Biden’s willingness to face the man he previously called a “war criminal” who “cannot stay in power” since the Russian invasion of Ukraine came on Feb. 24 when he and Mr Macron pledged to and to continue French support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian troops.
Biden said the only way to end the war in Ukraine is for Putin to withdraw his troops.
“The idea that Putin is ever going to beat Ukraine is incomprehensible,” the president added.
The pair spoke at a news conference before Biden honored Macron with a grand state dinner on Thursday evening, the first of the US president’s presidency for a foreign leader.
Hours earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained that European countries had so far offered nothing concrete in terms of mediation.
Meanwhile, a senior Ukrainian official said between 10,000 and 13,000 of his soldiers had been killed since the start of the war. Neither Ukraine nor Russia tend to release casualty figures, and the comments of Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, have not been confirmed by the Ukrainian military.
Britain’s defense ministry said Russian troops were hampered from conducting “large-scale offensive ground operations” in Ukraine by ammunition shortages.
On the ground, a Russian missile strike hit and set fire to a building in the Ukrainian-occupied city of Zaporizhzhia, as part of a strategy to destroy the city’s industrial and energy infrastructure, local official Anatoly Krutyev said.
Kiev mayor Vitaliy Klitschko told residents on Thursday to stock up on water, food and warm clothing in case of a total blackout.
Russian artillery pounded Ukrainian positions in and around the eastern city of Bakhmut and the regional capital of Kherson in the south, Ukraine’s general staff said late Thursday.