The Kremlin has bizarrely claimed Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be able to join peace talks with Vladimir Putin because of a 2022 Ukrainian law.

After pressure from the White House, the Ukrainian president confirmed ” target=”_blank” class=” js-entry-link cet-internal-link” data-vars-item-name=”yesterday” data-vars-item-type=”text” data-vars-unit-name=”67c84e4ce4b0efaf8f9fc011″ data-vars-unit-type=”buzz_body” data-vars-target-content-id=”/%3Casset-code%20id=%2267c850881600002600c51bc6%22%20type=%22image%22%3E%3C/asset-code%3E” data-vars-target-content-type=”feed” data-vars-type=”web_internal_link” data-vars-subunit-name=”article_body” data-vars-subunit-type=”component” data-vars-position-in-subunit=”4″>yesterday that his country “is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible”.

While Donald Trump appeared delighted by the news – and claimed Russia was sending “strong signals” it is up for peace talks as well – Putin’s top team suggested otherwise on Wednesday.

The Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed Zelenskyy is “still legally prohibited from negotiating with the Russian side”.

He said it was “positive” Zelenskyy was interested in peace talks, but claimed “the details have not changed”.

This was supposedly in reference to a law from 2022, which states negotiations with the Russian leader would be “impossible”.

Neither Ukraine nor its western allies have recently mentioned this Ukrainian decree, which was signed seven months after Putin’s brutal invasion.

The law came in after Putin illegally annexed four occupied regions of Ukraine and declared they were part of Russia.

At the time, Zelenskyy said: “He [Putin] does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia.”

According to reports, the Ukrainian president had called for face-to-face talks with Putin but was spurned by Moscow before declaring any such discussions “impossible”.

The Kremlin said at the time that it would wait for Kyiv to sit down for talks on concluding the conflict, but said that may not be possible until a new Ukrainian president takes office.

But Trump has started his second administration by pushing for an end to the war by any means necessary – even if that means giving Russia, whom he does not play for the war, the upper hand in negotiations.

The US president has already paused its military aid to Ukraine on Tuesday in an effort to push Kyiv to the negotiation table.

It did seem to work. Within hours, Zelenskyy released a public statement and sent a letter to Trump saying he was interested in negotiations.

The White House has not yet said when it will reinstate the much-needed aid to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Putin is sticking to the false Russian claim that his country was “forced” into the war.

According to Russian state news agency TASS, the president said on Wednesday: “In the context of the armed conflict forced upon us and the execution of the special military operation, the entire law enforcement sector and its key link, the Interior Ministry, should certainly build all their activities based on these threats, which undoubtedly arise in today’s situation.”