COLLUSION? Kremlin Welcomes Potential Meeting Between Trump and Putin

(AP) – The Kremlin has welcomed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s readiness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior Moscow official said Friday.

Russia attaches no conditions to the possibility of face-to-face talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call.

Trump said Thursday that “Putin wants to meet” and that a meeting is being set up. He indicated that efforts to end the almost three-year war between Russia and Ukraine were behind the overtures for talks. “We have to get that war over with,” Trump said when referring to his possible meeting with Putin.

Trump, who has criticized U.S. aid for Ukraine’s war effort, has called Putin “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine and has praised Russia’s military record in historical conflicts. Putin has been accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Ukrainian officials are alarmed at the possibility that the U.S., its single biggest donor, could reduce or stop providing aid. Without Western support, its fight against Russia’s invasion could be doomed.

The outgoing Biden administration is providing Ukraine with as much military support as it can, including approving a new $500 million package of weapons, with the aim of putting Ukraine in the strongest position possible for any future negotiations to end the war.

“We are aware that the (Biden) administration will try to leave as difficult legacy in bilateral relations as possible for Trump and his team,” Peskov said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that in any peace negotiation his country would need assurances about its future protection from Russia, its much bigger neighbor, which has invaded Ukraine twice since the turn of the century. Europe alone cannot provide that guarantee, he said late Thursday.

“European security guarantees are not sufficient for Ukraine that fights such an enemy as Russia. We need joint security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine is to receive $2 billion in military aid packages after Thursday’s meeting in Germany of senior officials from more than 50 countries which have been supporting Kyiv’s war effort, according to Zelenskyy.

Ukraine has so far signed partnerships with 34 countries in the fields of air and missile defense, digital security, demining, and naval cooperation, Zelenskyy said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has for the first time received funds from the European Union from frozen Russian assets, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Friday.

The Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans for Ukraine is an initiative by G7 countries to collectively provide nearly $50 billion in non-repayable financial aid to Ukraine.

As a part of ERA initiative, Ukraine received three billion Euro and intends to spend it on “priority budget expenditures,” Shmyhal said.