A cease-fire is impossible until peace negotiations with Ukraine begin, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a press conference in Astana on Thursday regarding the war in Ukraine.

"We simply cannot declare a ceasefire in the hope that the other side will take some positive steps, we simply cannot do that," insisted Putin, who was in the Kazakh capital to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

He added:

Moscow cannot allow the Ukrainian side to use the ceasefire to improve its situation and supply weapons, as it did before.

"We need to get the opposing side to agree to take steps that are irreversible and acceptable to the Russian Federation. Without reaching these agreements, a ceasefire is impossible," he added.

As we wrote a few days ago , during his visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider a deadline-bound ceasefire.

Vladimir Putin considers it unlikely that the conflict could be ended with the help of mediators alone, as the mediator should be authorized to sign documents. However, he added that Russia welcomes the mediation.

In principle, he called it possible, but pointless, for Moscow to turn to the Ukrainian parliament regarding settlement negotiations after Volodymyr Zelensky's five-year presidential mandate expired.

He believed that the Ukrainian legislature, which is still considered legitimate by the Russian side, is "subordinated to the upper management who usurped power."

Putin said that he does not know the specific proposals of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to settle the conflict in Ukraine, but as he said, "the fact that Mr. Trump as a presidential candidate says that he is ready and willing to stop the war in Ukraine, we take very seriously ".

He called the key question what Trump's specific proposals would contain, adding that he did not know how his former running mate was going to present them.

"I have no doubt that he is speaking honestly, and we support that," the Russian president said.

Turning to the issue of Russian-American relations, he called it impossible to establish a constructive dialogue with the United States before the American presidential election. He said it was for negotiations on military stability

Good will is needed on the part of the United States, and Washington is sometimes willing to engage in dialogue and other times not.

He said that since the United States had previously canceled the INF Treaty banning the deployment of such devices, and later announced that they would begin their production, Russia also feels entitled to engage in design and development work, and in the future also in production. . As he said, the Russian industry has already received the relevant instructions.

In addition, he reminded that he had previously ordered a moratorium on the installation of such medium- and shorter-range missile systems until such systems appeared in some region of the world.

Putin called it a signal to the whole world against the militarization of outer space that the participants of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

took a stand against deploying weapons in outer space.

In response to a question, he said that the Taliban, which came to power in Afghanistan, are Moscow's allies in the fight against terrorism, and the Afghan movement has indicated that it is ready to cooperate in this area.

MTI

Front page image: MTI/EPA/Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev