MOSCOW, May 13 (Reuters) – Russia is interested in joint economic projects with the United States if Washington stops tying trade ties to a peace agreement in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
In his daily briefing with reporters, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, also reiterated the hard terms to end the war, which President Vladimir Putin set out almost two years ago and which Ukraine has emphatically rejected.
Both Russian and American companies could potentially profit from a number of joint investments and economic projects, Peskov said.
‘To the extent that the American side is willing to decouple the prospects for normalization of trade and economic ties from a Ukrainian agreement, or to the extent that a Ukrainian agreement occurs, we expect that the path to the implementation of a whole range of economic projects will be opened,’ he said.
Putin has said there is potential for Russia and the United States to jointly explore vast mineral reserves in the Arctic, and he also floated the possibility of projects in Alaska.
His investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a key figure in Moscow-Washington negotiations, even proposed the construction of a railway tunnel ‘Putin-Trump’ under the Bering Strait to connect the two countries.
For now, however, Russia remains under broad U.S. sanctions, largely tied to the war. Trump’s efforts to end it have yielded no progress so far, although both he and Putin have said in recent days that they believe the end of the conflict is near, after more than four years of intense fighting.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he does not believe Russia has any intention of stopping the war.
Peskov reiterated the conditions Putin set in June 2024, when he said that a ceasefire and negotiations could only occur if Ukraine withdrew from the territory it still holds in four regions that Russia says it has annexed.
Ukraine rejected these conditions as absurd and refused to relinquish the land it has defended successfully since 2022. Currently, Russia controls about 20% of the country.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov)
