Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned his American counterpart Donald Trump against taking meetings the now-postponed summit in Budapest where both were supposed to hold a summit on Ukraine war.
“Dialogue
is always better than confrontation. It would be a mistake for both me and the US President to approach this lightly and come away from this meeting without the expected result,” Putin said.
Putin pointed out while speaking to reporters that the Trump administration propose the meeting. “Now, Trump has decided to postpone the meeting. Well, what can one always say? Dialogue is always better than confrontation, than disputes, or even more so than war,” he said.
The Russian President also took the opportunity to warn that Russian response to a Tomahawk missile being fired at their territory would be “serious, if not overwhelming”.
Putin said his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s insistence on getting them from the US to power Kyiv’s arsenal is “an attempt at escalation”.
“But if such weapons are used to strike Russian territory, the response will be very serious, if not overwhelming. Let them think about that,” he said.
Meanwhile, the UK urged Ukraine’s allies to “finish the job” on Russian assets as he told Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in London there was more that they could do to bolster Kyiv’s long-range missile capability.
Starmer met Zelensky at his London residence before holding talks with Ukraine’s key backers.
“I think there’s further we can do on capability, particularly… long-range capability, and of course, the vital work for coalition of the willing when it comes to the security guarantees that are necessary,” the UK leader said.
On Russia’s sovereign assets he said he would like to see countries finish what had been started and unlock funding to support Ukraine.
“The UK is ready to move in tandem with the EU (European Union) to drive this forward as fast as possible, to get those funds flowing to Ukraine,” he said.
The United States and EU have both announced new sanctions this week on Russian energy.
