Feb. 21—Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to reporters’ questions on Feb. 19 regarding the talks in Saudi Arabia between high-level Russian and U.S. delegations, and a few other matters.
Regarding the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh, Kommersant quoted him as saying, "I value these talks highly. They produced results. The American participants were entirely different people, they were open to a process of unimpeded discussion, without any judgment about what has been done in the past.
“We agreed to resume the work of diplomatic missions in a normal manner. The constant expulsion of diplomats from Washington and Moscow does not lead to anything good.” In response to questions about a possible mediator between the two countries, Putin responded: "Someone wants to be a mediator between Russia and the United States? This is probably an excessive demand. The work continues and the outlook is good.
“In the next couple of days, I plan to call Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and thank him for organizing Russian-American negotiations in Riyadh.”
Commenting on a possible upcoming meeting with President Trump:
“I would be happy to meet Donald, we haven’t seen each other for a long time. We don’t have any close relations, but still, in previous years, during the four years when he was president, we met and discussed our country-to-country relations a lot.
“It will take some time. I am not ready to tell you how much time it will take, but it’s our desire to hold such a meeting, and I would like to have it. But, I repeat, it requires preparation.”
On the Russian-Ukrainian conflict:
“When Mr. Trump was a candidate for the US presidency, he spoke about timeframes, fairly short timeframes for settling, say, the Ukrainian crisis. But after he began to receive information as an elected President from the intelligence services and so on, he changed his position, he said: yes, it will take six months….
“As for the negotiation process, President Trump told me during a telephone conversation, and I can confirm this, that, of course, the United States assumes that the negotiation process will take place with the participation of both Russia and Ukraine. No one is excluding Ukraine from this process.”
Putin also held a lengthy press conference online today with participants all over the Russian Federation. These largely dealt with domestic matters. He was asked, however, what pictures he had in his office. He responded that in one office he had only an icon, and in the other only a bust of Mikhail Lomonosov, the first ethnic Russian involved in scientific endeavors and the founder of the first Russian institutions in chemistry and mineralogy.