The Kremlin has announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Donald Trump’s newly formed “board of peace,” which was set up last week to oversee a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday that Russia is seeking to “clarify all the nuances” of the offer with Washington before providing a response.
The claimed invitation comes as Putin shows no signs of ending his invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and numerous atrocities committed by Russian forces against civilians. The Russian president has repeatedly rejected proposals for ceasefires along the current frontlines.
The Kremlin also stated that Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and will meet with members of the US delegation. It remains unclear whether these meetings will involve discussions about the Gaza board.
The inclusion of Putin in a global body tasked with overseeing peace efforts around the world would add considerable weight to long-standing suspicions that Trump favours the Russian president in his approach to the Ukraine conflict. At the same time, Trump has been escalating pressure on Denmark and other European countries to accept his plans to take over Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, and has imposed punitive measures on those who have objected most strenuously.
The UK is one of the targeted countries, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer has denounced the tariffs as “completely wrong,” reiterating that “any decision on Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland and Denmark alone.” However, Starmer did not commit to the imposition of retaliatory tariffs on the US and downplayed the prospect of Trump’s actual use of force in Greenland.
Kremlin spokesperson Peskov suggested that a US takeover of Greenland would cement Trump’s place in the history books, saying, “Here, perhaps, it is possible to abstract from whether this is good or bad, whether it will comply with the parameters of international law or not,” but adding that it would “certainly go down in history.”