Russian President Vladimir Putin remains ready to make concessions agreed at the Anchorage summit, he said at a State Council meeting on Thursday, December 25, Kommersant reported.
As Ukraine’s Strana.ua notes, and as earlier reports in other media indicated, this would include dropping the demand that Ukrainian troops withdraw from parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions that the Kremlin declared part of Russia after “referendums” in occupied territories in the fall of 2022.
According to Kommersant, at the State Council meeting Putin focused largely on talks with the United States and Ukraine over a plan to halt the war.
He said a “partial exchange of territories from the Russian side as well” could not be ruled out.
At the same time, Putin stressed that “the status of the Kramatorsk–Kostiantynivka–Sloviansk junction (in Ukraine’s Donetsk region) is not up for discussion.”
Putin said Russia and the United States are discussing joint management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
He claimed the U.S. had shown interest in mining at the facility and initiated talks on supplying electricity to Ukraine.
Asked whether Ukrainian specialists can work at the plant, he said they are already there, “they just have Russian passports now.”
He also said that after talks with European leaders, the U.S. side “backed away” from some of its proposals, calling it a sign of weakness.
On the morning of December 26, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would soon meet with U.S. President Donald Trump.
“We’re not wasting a day. We agreed on a meeting at the highest level—with President Trump in the near future. Much could be decided before the New Year,” he wrote on Telegram.
According to a source cited by Ukraine’s The Kyiv Post, if all goes according to plan, the meeting could take place as early as December 28.
In late November, Trump said he was ready to meet with Zelensky and Putin only if a peace agreement between the countries “is final or in its final stage.”
