Russia ready for dialogue with US — Putin

 Russia is still ready for a dialogue with the US, which is the best way to reach mutual understanding, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with French TF-1 TV channel and radio station Europe-1. Extracts from the interview were released on Wednesday morning.

“I have no reasons to believe the US president does not want to talk to the Russian president, but, after all, he is free to do so,” Putin said. “I am always ready for a dialogue and think this is the best way to build bridges.” Until now, the two leaders had spoken on the telephone several times, he added.

Putin pointed to Washington’s highly aggressive actions on the international arena.

“It is no secret that the most aggressive, the most rigid policy on protection of own interests, as understood by the US Administration, is pursued exactly by the US, year in, year out,” Putin said. “We have barely any troops abroad, whereas the US has troops everywhere, it has military bases all over the world, and everywhere they participate in deciding the fates of other nations that are thousands of miles away from their own borders.”

The full text of the interview will be published on Wednesday evening.

No Russian instructors or army units in south-east Ukraine

There are no Russian military instructors or army units in south-eastern Ukraine, Putin stressed.

In response to a journalists’ question about the possibility of Russia’s military interference in the Ukraine situation, Putin said, “There have not been and there are not any Russian army units or military instructors in south-eastern Ukraine.”

Putin rejected speculations that Russia had intentions to “annex or destabilize the south-east of Ukraine.”

“No, we have never engaged and are not engaged in this,” the Russian president said. “The Ukrainian authorities should establish a dialogue with their own population with the help of a negotiation process and not with the help of weapons, tanks and aircraft.”

The Ukrainian crisis should not become a new round of the Cold War and its settlement should be achieved through peaceful dialogue, Putin said.

“First of all, I hope we are not entering a new phase of the Cold War. Secondly, I insist that wherever people may live they have certain rights and should have a possibility to safeguard them. That is the point,” the Russian president said.