Putin softens tone as West’s date for renewal of sanctions looms

When Russian president Vladimir Putin pardoned Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko this week, in what many see a fresh bid to secure sanctions relief from the West, he credited one of her compatriots with helping to arrange her release.

Putin said his close friend Viktor Medvedchuk, a powerbroker who wants Kiev to rebuild strong ties with Moscow, had met relatives of two Russian journalists killed by artillery fire allegedly directed by Savchenko in eastern Ukraine, and they had subsequently asked the Kremlin to pardon her. Medvedchuk – whose daughter is Putin's godchild – said Savchenko's release was "perhaps even a stage in the restoration of mutual relations between Ukraine and Russia".

The two states have been at odds since Ukraine's pro-western revolution in 2014, and Moscow's subsequent annexation of Crimea and provision of fighters and heavy weapons to separatist forces in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region – actions for which the EU and US imposed economic sanctions on Russia.

Conflict zone

Putin thanked the journalists’ relatives for their “humanitarian” decision, and said he hoped it would “lead to a reduction in the confrontation in the conflict zone and will help avoid such losses, which are terrible and which nobody needs”.

With his pardon for Savchenko – a hero for millions of Ukrainians and a hate-figure for many Russians – and his softer recent rhetoric on Ukraine, Putin appears to be seeking to persuade the West to lift its punishing sanctions on his country.

"We believe our relations with the EU do not face any problems that we cannot solve," Putin wrote in Greek newspaper Kathemirini ahead of his visit to the country on Friday.

Calling for “one-sided relationships to be abandoned”, Putin said the “old continent” could only secure its “rightful position” in the world “by combining capacities of all the European countries, including Russia”.

“I am convinced that we should draw appropriate conclusions from the events in Ukraine and proceed to establishing, in the vast space stretching between the Atlantic and the Pacific . . . a zone of economic and humanitarian co-operation based on the architecture of equal and indivisible security,” Putin wrote. Such language is far removed from the angry tone of most Kremlin rhetoric over the last two years, and will be music to many EU political parties – including some in power – which seek rapprochement with Russia.

Savchenko's release and Putin's softer words came as G7 leaders met – without him – on Thursday, and as the EU discusses whether to prolong sanctions on Russia's banking, defence and energy sectors that expire in July.

Extending them would require EU unanimity, and several members – including Hungary, Italy and Greece – have expressed reluctance, while the likes of Poland and the Baltic states are adamant that sanctions must continue.

Sceptics say there has been no real progress in eastern Ukraine, where at least seven Ukrainian troops and two rebels have died in fighting this week. "For me it's too early to give the all-clear," German chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.