Trump said on Thursday he wanted to meet Putin as soon as possible to secure an end to the war with Ukraine and expressed his desire to work towards cutting nuclear arms, something the Kremlin said Putin had made clear he wanted too.
When asked if Putin and Trump would use this weekend to hold their first phone call since Trump's inauguration - an essential precursor ahead of a face-to-face meeting for deeper talks - Peskov said: "Putin is ready. We are waiting for signals (from Washington). Everyone is ready. It is difficult to read the coffee grounds here. As soon as there is something, if there is something, we will inform you."
US President Donald Trump says the Ukraine war needs to end as "millions of lives are being wasted". (AP PHOTO)
Trump, who on Thursday was addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos via video link, said he wanted to work towards cutting nuclear arms, adding that he thought Russia and China might support reducing their own weapons capabilities.
"We'd like to see denuclearisation ... and I will tell you President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear. And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow, and China would have come along too," Trump said.
Peskov said Putin had made it clear he wanted to resume nuclear disarmament negotiations as soon as possible, but said such talks would need to be wider than in the past to cover other countries' nuclear arsenals, including those of France and Britain.
"So there is something to talk about, we need to talk. Time has been lost in many respects. We have spoken about such interest before, so the ball is in the court of the US, which has stopped all substantive contacts with our country," he said.
Peskov also took issue with Trump's assertion that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was ready to strike a peace deal, pointing out that Zelenskiy had, in a 2022 decree, ruled out any negotiations with Putin.
"In order to reach a settlement, it is necessary to hold negotiations. (But) Zelenskiy has banned himself from conducting in his own decree."
Zelenskiy said this week that at least 200,000 European peacekeepers would be needed to prevent a new Russian attack on Ukraine after any ceasefire deal.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Earlier this week, Trump threatened to impose "high levels" of sanctions on Russia and tariffs on imports from there if the Kremlin did not reach a settlement.
Ukrainian officials praised Trump on Thursday for threatening to impose tariffs and sanctions on Russia if it refuses to make a deal to end the war.
Ukraine's air force said it fought off a Russian drone attack overnight. (AP PHOTO)
Separately Russian air defences repelled a massive Ukrainian drone attack overnight, intercepting and destroying 121 drones targeting 13 regions, including Moscow, Russia's Defence Ministry said, making no mention of casualties or damage.
The ministry said six drones had been destroyed over the Moscow region and one over the capital itself, while other drones had targeted other regions, including those that border Ukraine and Kursk, where Ukrainian troops hold a chunk of land despite Russian efforts to eject them.
Twenty drones had also targeted the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, the ministry said, and channels on the Telegram messaging app posted unverified videos of what bloggers there described as large blazes in the city. They said an oil storage depot and a power station had been hit.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's air force said on Friday it had also fought off a Russian drone attack had shot down 25 of 58 drones launched by Russia in an overnight assault.
Ukraine's interior ministry said drone debris had killed two men and a woman in the central Kyiv region, and that another person had been injured.
with AP
