The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it did not see any direct link between a deal on exporting Russian diesel to the United States and Moscow’s own stance on the Ukraine peace talks.
It was commenting on a Reuters source-based story, which reported that US President Donald Trump’s envoys had told Ukrainian officials on Friday that the deal to allow Russian diesel exports was part of an attempt to draw Russia back into negotiations over a possible peace settlement in Ukraine.
“I don’t see any direct connection here,” Kremlin spokesman Peskov told a daily conference call with reporters.
“This is in fact a highly mutually beneficial area of Russian-American cooperation. It serves the interests of the United States, the global energy markets, and the Russian Federation. That is why it is happening.”
Substantive negotiations to end the war have stalled, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that he believed the conflict had reached a dangerous stalemate even as he pledged that Washington would keep working to try to find a way to end the fighting.
Peskov also rejected European criticism of the diesel deal as “cynical”, given that Europe continued to buy some Russian oil and liquified natural gas.
Russia still supplies a small portion of oil to Slovakia and Hungary via Ukraine through the Soviet-built Druzhba pipeline.
“Russia is supplying its competitive commodities to global markets, and we will continue to do so,” Peskov said.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Andrew Osborn )