Kamala Harris rules out bilateral talks with Vladimir Putin on ending war in Ukraine

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Kamala Harris has ruled out meeting one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine unless leaders from Kyiv were involved.

In some of her most detailed comments to date about how she would try to end Russia’s war in Ukraine if elected US president, Harris said she would not meet “bilaterally” with Putin “without Ukraine”.

“Ukraine must have a say in the future of Ukraine,” Harris added, in a televised interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes that aired on Monday night.

Harris also criticised Donald Trump’s claims that he would immediately halt the war.

“Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now,” Harris added. “He talks about, ‘Oh, he can end it on day one.’ You know what that is? It’s about surrender.”

With less than a month to go until November’s US presidential election, Harris, Joe Biden’s vice-president, and her Republican opponent are sharpening their attacks on each other.

While Harris maintains a more than three-point lead in national polls, according to a Financial Times poll tracker, the two candidates remain locked in a virtual tie in the seven swing states that will determine the election outcome.

In the 60 Minutes interview the vice-president sidestepped a question about whether she would expand Nato — a central ambition of Ukraine.

“Those are all issues that we will deal with if and when it arrives at that point,” she said, adding that the administration’s focus was on “supporting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked aggression”.

CBS said Trump had declined to participate in a similar interview with 60 Minutes on Monday night.

Trump has repeatedly said that he would end the fighting in Ukraine on “day one” if he were given another term in the White House, but has refused to detail how he would do so.

He met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month in New York, when the Republican presidential candidate touted his “very good relationship” with Putin as he said the war would be “resolved very quickly” if he were elected in November.

Harris met the Ukrainian president one day earlier at the White House. In remarks alongside Zelenskyy following their meeting, Harris suggested Trump would “force Ukraine to give up large parts” of its land and “require Ukraine to forgo security”.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After more than two and a half years of the invasion, Kyiv is under growing pressure from western partners to find a path to a negotiated settlement with Moscow.

Trump raised alarm bells across Europe last month when, in his only televised debate against Harris, the former president refused to answer a moderator’s question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war. Instead he replied: “I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly [lost], people being killed by the millions.”

Earlier this year, Trump warned the US’s Nato allies that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if alliance members failed to meet defence spending targets.