Putin hopes for peace with Ukraine, has 'questions' to Zelensky

21.02.2020 13:15

Ukrinform

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he does not lose hope to reach an agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on improving relations between the two countries.

He said this in an interview with the TASS news agency for the project entitled "20 Questions to Vladimir Putin."

"There's always hope [to reach an agreement with Zelensky on peace and friendship]," Putin said.

However, he clarified that there are "questions" to Zelensky. "Unfortunately, as you see, after returning from [the Normandy Four summit between Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France on December 9 in] Paris, he [Zelensky] started talking about the necessity to review the Minsk agreements. This begs the question. Nevertheless, we managed to agree on the prisoner swap. We managed to agree on gas," he said.

When asked whether friendship with Ukraine was a loss for Russia, Putin said: "Yes." At the same time, he repeated his thesis that "we [Russians and Ukrainians] are the same people."