Russia’s president says that he is ready for new negotiations to take place and that Ukraine will not be excluded.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he was briefed on the outcome of Russia-US talks in Saudi Arabia and was pleased with the results, according to Russian news agencies.

“Yes, I have been informed. I rate them highly, there are results,” he was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Wednesday. “In my opinion, we made the first step to restore work in various areas of mutual interests”.

United States and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first high-level talks between the two countries since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

The meeting signified a dramatic policy shift by Washington, which imposed a raft of sanctions and worked to isolate Moscow on the world stage over the war.

Ukraine and European governments were not invited to the talks in Riyadh, heightening their concern that Russia and the US might cut a deal that ignores their vital interests.

Russian leader ‘would like to meet Trump’

Putin said that Ukraine was not being excluded from negotiations to end the war, but that his country needed to build trust with the United States in order to resolve the conflict.

“No one is excluding Ukraine,” Putin said in a televised meeting with journalists in Saint Petersburg, adding that there was no need for a “hysterical” reaction to the US-Russia talks.

“It is impossible to solve many issues, including the Ukrainian crisis, without increasing the level of trust between Russia and the United States,” he said.

He added that he would like to meet US President Donald Trump in person but that the meeting would need to be prepared.

The comments come hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space” as a result of the talks in Riyadh.

Putin said Russia had never rejected talks with the Europeans or with Kyiv, and it was they who had refused to talk to Moscow.

“We are not imposing anything on anyone. We are ready, I have already said this a hundred times – if they want, please, let these negotiations take place. And we will be ready to return to the table for negotiations,” he said.

He also suggested Europe may have coordinated a Ukrainian drone attack on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) in southern Russia on Monday.

The strike hit a pumping station on the oil pipeline in Russia, reducing flows from Kazakhstan to world markets pumped by Western firms including Chevron and ExxonMobil.

The Russian president said that he did not believe Ukraine to have organised such an attack on its own, and claimed it was likely backed by Western intelligence.

He also announced that Russian troops crossed into Ukraine from the Kursk region overnight and were advancing along the line of contact, near the border with Ukraine’s Sumy region.

The claim was swiftly rejected by Andriy Kovalenko, a Ukrainian official responsible for countering disinformation.

“Putin’s information about a large-scale Russian offensive is a lie,” he said, adding that a Russian reconnaissance unit had tried to cross but had been destroyed.

A ground attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region would be the first since Russia retreated from there in 2022.