At his annual year-end press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin also took questions from the foreign press. When NBC News’ obstreperous Moscow correspondent Keir Simmons was called, he asked Putin: “Mr. President, I want to ask you about relations with President Trump and the United States. President Trump has a peace deal on the table. Ukraine is offering enormous compromises, yet you continue to talk of war. Mr. President, if you reject President Trump’s peace offer, will you be responsible for the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians in 2026?”
Putin responded: “We do not believe that we bear any responsibility for human casualties because we were not the ones who started this war. It followed a government coup in Ukraine—the unconstitutional government coup in 2014, followed by the effort by the leaders of the Kiev regime to unleash combat operations against their own people in southeastern Ukraine.
“We refrained from recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics as independent states for quite a long time. But when we got misled and the other side failed to fulfill the Minsk Agreements, we had no other option left than to use our armed forces for putting an end to the war unleashed by the Kiev regime with the support of Western countries.
“President Trump has been serious about ending this conflict. He said that he was absolutely sincere in his efforts. Moreover, during the meeting with Trump in Anchorage, we coordinated and came really close to accepting President Trump’s proposals.
