Putin ready to talk to Trump, waiting for 'signals', Kremlin says

Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to talk to U.S. counterpart Donald Trump but is waiting for signals from Washington first, the Kremlin said on Friday, fuelling expectations the two would be in contact.

The Ukraine conflict has plunged relations between the two nuclear powers to their lowest levels since the Cold War, with Trump repeatedly promising to end the fighting with a "deal".

He told reporters on Thursday he would meet Putin "immediately", and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted to negotiate.

"Putin is ready. We are waiting for signals," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Trump's overtures.

Peskov said that he could not comment further on a possible meeting between the leaders, saying it was "hard to read coffee grounds" to predict the future.

Trump has threatened Russia with tougher economic sanctions if it does not agree to end its nearly three-year offensive.

"If they don't settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I'm going to put massive tariffs on Russia, and massive taxes, and also big sanctions," the Republican said during a Fox News interview on Thursday.

The Kremlin rejected Trump's claim that the conflict in Ukraine could be ended by lowering the price of oil used to fund Moscow's budget, saying: "This conflict does not depend on oil prices."

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Trump had said that he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower oil prices, saying: "If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately."

Peskov said the conflict was instead based on "threats to Russia's national security", "threats to Russians" living in Ukraine and "the lack of desire and complete refusal of Americans and Europeans to listen to Russia's concerns".

- Three dead near Kyiv -

Neither side has shown signs of de-escalating hostilities since Trump's inauguration on Monday.

Russian aerial attacks near Kyiv killed three people and wounded several others, Ukrainian officials said Friday, while Ukraine fired 120 drones at at least 12 Russian regions, including the capital Moscow.

The Kremlin has launched drone or missile attacks at Kyiv almost every day since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, ostensibly targeting military and energy facilities.

"Three people were killed in an enemy attack in the Kyiv region," the emergency services said in a statement on social media.

It said fragments of a drone had struck a 10-story residential building after the head of the region said a private home had also been hit.

Black smoke billowed from a residential building damaged in the strike as rescue workers hauled out the bodies of the victims, official images from the scene showed.

In Russia, the Ukrainian military said it launched an overnight drone attack striking an oil refinery, power station facilities and an electronics plant.

State media reported that a microelectronics factory had halted work after six Ukrainian drones damaged production and storage facilities in the Bryansk region.

Moscow and Kyiv are both vying to gain the upper hand ahead of possible negotiations in the early days of Trump's administration.

Prior to his inauguration, Trump vowed to end the Ukraine conflict immediately upon taking office, raising concerns in Ukraine it would be forced to make major territorial concessions to Russia.

Moscow has been advancing on the battlefield for months, closing in on the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.

On Friday, Russia said its forces captured the village of Tymofiivka about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the key industrial hub.

© Agence France-Presse