Biden offers talks to Putin as Ukraine says war has killed 10,000 of its troops
US PRESIDENT Joe Biden has indicated he would be willing to talk with Vladimir Putin if the Russian leader demonstrated he seriously wanted to end the invasion in Ukraine.
But the American leader made such talks conditional on support by Nato allies.
The Kremlin said it would be open to negotiations, but not on the West’s demand to pull out of Ukraine.
Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions at the end of September, without controlling any of them.
Mr Biden made his offer during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, where both leaders promised to maintain a united front against Russia
“I’m prepared to speak with Mr Putin if in fact there is an interest in him deciding that he’s looking for a way to end the war,” Mr Biden said. “He hasn’t done that yet.”
Mr Biden honoured Mr Macron with a grand state dinner.
In recent Mr Macron has made numerous calls for Ukraine and Russia to meet at the negotiating table, but some of his comments have rankled Nato, US and Ukrainian officials.
White House officials have publicly maintained it is solely up to Ukraine’s leadership to decide when it is appropriate to engage the Russians and have stressed the war could end immediately if Mr Putin ceased his invasion.
Mr Biden’s remarks on being willing to meet Mr Putin came as senior Ukrainian military chiefs revealed more than 10,000 of the country’s soldiers have been killed in the country’s nine-month struggle against Russia’s invasion – far below recent casualty estimates from Western leaders.
The figure emerged as Russian forces kept up rocket attacks on infrastructure and air strikes against Ukrainian troop positions along the contact line.
Moscow’s push focused on a dozen towns including Bakhmut and Avdiivka, key targets for Russia in the east.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, relayed the new figures about Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle, while noting that the number of injured troops was higher and civilian casualty counts were “significant”.
He told Channel 24: “We have official figures from the general staff, we have official figures from the top command, and they amount to between 10,000 and 12,500-13,000 killed.”
The military has not confirmed such figures, and it marks a rare instance of a Ukrainian official providing them.
The last count dates to late August, when the head of the armed forces said nearly 9,000 military personnel had been killed.
In June, Mr Podolyak said up to 200 soldiers were dying each day, in some of the most intense fighting and bloodshed this year.
On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive Commission, said 100,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed before her office corrected her comments – calling them inaccurate and saying the figure referred to both killed and injured.
Last month, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and “well over” 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war so far.
He added it was the “same thing probably on the Ukrainian side”.
The UN human rights office, in its latest weekly update, said it had recorded 6,655 civilians killed and 10,368 injured, but has acknowledged its tally includes only casualties it has confirmed and likely far understates the actual toll.
Ukrainians have been bracing for freezing winter temperatures as Russia’s campaign has recently hit infrastructure including power plants and electrical transformers, leaving many without heat, water and electricity.
Ukraine has faced a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks since early October.
The shelling has been especially intense in southern Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine’s army reclaimed the southern city almost three weeks ago.
Local authorities said about two-thirds of the city of Kherson had electricity as of Thursday night, after new Russian strikes had cut power that had recently been restored.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian embassies and consulates in six European countries have received packages containing animals’ eyes in recent days, officials said.
The country’s foreign ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko wrote on Facebook that the “bloody parcels” were received by its embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia and Italy, as well as by consulates in Naples, Italy; Krakow, Poland; and the Czech city of Brno. He said “we are studying the meaning of this message”.
Mr Nikolenko said the items arrived after a package containing an explosive device sent to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid ignited upon being opened on Wednesday, injuring an employee. This was one of multiple explosive parcels found in Spain this week.
I’m prepared to speak with Mr Putin if in fact there is an interest in him deciding that he’s looking for a way to end the war